collective

«collective» in Mova's school dictionary: Done or shared by all members of a group together — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 3 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

adjective (collective); noun (a collective, collectives)

meaning for a pupil

1) (adjective) Done or shared by all members of a group together. tree →

2) (noun) A group of people who work together and share what they make or own. tree →

3) (grammar) A collective noun is a word for a group, like a flock of sheep, a team or a herd. tree →

sense in the lessons

Used in grammar lessons (collective nouns: a pride of lions, a swarm of bees), citizenship (collective decisions) and everyday life (collective effort). Phrases: collective noun, collective effort, collective responsibility, a farmers' collective.

examples

• "Flock" is a collective noun for sheep. tree →
• It was a collective effort to clean the beach. tree →
• The class made a collective decision to raise money for the zoo. tree →
• A pride of lions is a collective noun. tree →
• The artists formed a collective and shared a studio. tree →
• We felt a collective sigh of relief when the test ended. tree →
• A murder of crows is a funny collective noun. tree →

note

Adverb: collectively. With collective nouns, UK English often uses a plural verb (the team are winning), US uses singular (the team is winning). Related: collect, collection.

In the corpora

• A collective noun names a group, like a team, a class, a herd or a flock of sheep.
• That is called collective punishment, and it is not fair to the others.
• Punishing a whole group for what one person did is called collective punishment; it is unfair to those who did nothing.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «collective» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.