What is a collective noun?

Answer 1

A noun that refers to a group or a collection of elements

Answer 2

A collective noun is a noun used to group people or things taken together as one whole in a descriptive way.

Some nouns are by definition collective nouns such as crowd, herd, or bouquet, words for groups. Some nouns can sometimes function as collective nouns or not: "Please set the table." (not a collective noun) or "a table of contents" (a collective noun). And some nouns are used as collective nouns because people like the way they sound or the way they color the image of a group; for example, "a stand of flamingos" and "a flamboyance of flamingos". Both are standard collective nouns for flamingos.

Some examples are:

• an army of ants
• a bouquet of flowers
• a band of gorillas
• a class of students
• a den of thieves
• a fleet of cars
• a gang of hoodlums
• a team of players

The plural form of the collective noun is used when there are two or more groups:

• books of matches
• bouquets of flowers
• bunches of bananas
• classes of students
• fleets of cars
• teams of players