Lesson 5: Collective Nouns- The naming words for a collection

Previous lesson:- Lesson 4: Common Nouns- The class names

Have you studied the previous lessons well? Today we are going to talk about another type of nouns called Collective Nouns. But first let us consider the following images:

IMAGE 1

IMAGE 2

IMAGE 3

IMAGE 4

What will you say about this images? A lot of flowers? Many keys? Many sticks? A lot of fish?

There are a good number of same type of things in each of these images. Such a group or a collection of a number of similar individuals or things taken together is given a name.

We give the name

• a "bouquet" to the collection of flowers in the image 1;
• a "bunch" of keys to the collection of keys in the image 2;
• a "bundle" of sticks to the collection of sticks in the image 3;
• a "shoal" of fish to the group of fish in the image 4

Here "bouquet", "bunch", "bundle",  "shoal" are collective nouns.

Some important collective noun

• A bunch of grapes / keys
• A pair of shoes
• A shower of rain
• An army or workmen
• A flight of birds
• A shoal of fish
• A stack of wood
• A group of islands

Tips

• From the above examples of collective nouns it is clear that we cannot mix up the expressions. We are to say - "a team of players" and "a shoal of fish" - we cannot say - *"a team of fish" or *"a shoal of players". Similarly, we cannot say - *"a herd of wood" or *"a flight of workmen" or *"a bundle of rain".
• It should be noted that we must add defining words to the collective nouns to make the expression meaningful. The collective noun - bundle - is meaningless unless we say - a bundle of sticks. Here - of sticks - are defining words.

Defining words for Collective Nouns

There are a great many collective nouns which need no such defining words. They fully indicate by themselves the class to which they apply. 

Some examples of such collective nouns are given below:

• Fleet = a number of warships under one commander
• Choir = a band of singers
• Rabble = a number of disorderly persons
• Bench = magistrates
• Furniture = all those (usually) movable things such as chairs, desks, tables, etc.
• Bouquet = flowers
• Audience = people listening to a play, concert, lecture, radio, television, etc.

Exercise 5 (Level: Easy): Identification of Collective Nouns

Next lesson: Lesson 6: Material Nouns - Name the substances