collection

Borrowed from Old French collection, from Latin collēctiō, collēctiōnem.

• (US) IPA^(key): /kəˈlɛkʃən/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛkʃən

collection (countable and uncountable, plural collections)

1. A set of items or amount of material procured or gathered together.
   • 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page vii:

     Secondly, I continue to base my concepts on intensive study of a limited suite of collections, rather than superficial study of every packet that comes to hand.

   • William Whewell

     collections of moisture

   • Dunglison

     a purulent collection

   The attic contains a remarkable collection of antiques, oddities, and random junk.

   The asteroid belt consists of a collection of dust, rubble, and minor planets.

2. Multiple related objects associated as a group.
   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.

   He has a superb coin collection.

3. The activity of collecting.

   Collection of trash will occur every Thursday.

4. (topology, mathematical analysis) A set of sets.
5. A gathering of money for charitable or other purposes, as by passing a contribution box for donations.
6. (law) Debt collection.
7. (obsolete) The act of inferring or concluding from premises or observed facts; also, that which is inferred.
   • John Milton

     We may safely say thus, that wrong collections have been hitherto made out of those words by modern divines.

8. (Britain) The jurisdiction of a collector of excise.
9. (in the plural, Britain, Oxford University slang) A set of college exams generally taken at the start of the term.
10. The quality of being collected; calm composure.

• c., coll. (abbreviations)

Borrowed from Latin collēctiō, collēctiōnem. Cf. also Old French quieuçon, which may be inherited from the same source, and the modern cueillaison, which was probably formed analogically.

• IPA^(key): /kɔ.lɛk.sjɔ̃/

• Audio (France, Paris)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔ̃
• Homophone: collections
• Hyphenation: col‧lec‧tion

collection f (plural collections)

1. collection

• collec
• collectionner
• collectionneur
• collectionnite

• collecte
• collecter
• cueillette
• cueillir

• “collection” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).