The roughly 200 collective nouns in the English language cause a lot of confusion, but there's a simple answer, writes grammar expert June Casagrande. News. Sports. TimesOC. Opinion.

Collective nouns can be taken as singular or plural, according to whether the word is seen as a unit or as individual items. For example: Thefamilyis proud ofitslineage. Family is seen as a whole ...

Collective nouns are singular in form, “a team,” but refer to a group of two or more people or things. In other words, they’re singular and plural at the same time.

Variously idiosyncratic, intriguing and often unerringly apt in their descriptions of gatherings of birds, animals and people a damning of jurors, an incredulity of cuckolds — most of the collective ...

Basically, collective nouns help us understand the subject by abstracting what is specific, by making it an image in the order of a noun. But — and here lies the beauty of collective nouns — by making ...

Most collective nouns, or “terms of venery,” were coined during the 15th century. Many were codified in books of courtesy, like the 1486 classic Book of St. Albans.

Collective nouns are the free radicals of the English language. Funny, lyrical, and bizarre ones pop up like mushrooms (like a troop of mushrooms), sometimes in the broad daylight of the New York ...

Collective nouns, the terms used to described a group, can be an imaginative bunch. We're used to herds or flocks or even gaggles, but some of the lesser-known collective nouns for animals seem ...