Meaning & use
collective
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Meanings
adjectivebefore a noun
Shared by, done by or involving all the members of a group acting together.
Grammar: Almost always comes before a noun: a collective decision, collective effort.
Patterns
- a collective effort
- collective responsibility
The team's collective effort won the contract.
The city's collective memory of the flood is still strong.
They made a collective decision to close the shop early.
nouncountable
A business, farm or art group owned and run together by the people who work in it.
Grammar: Countable: a collective, two collectives.
Patterns
- a collective of something
- join a collective
She joined an artists' collective in the old mill.
The bakery is run as a collective, with decisions made by vote.
A farm collective shares tools and profits.
nouncountabletechnical
In grammar, a noun that names a group of people or things, such as team or flock.
Grammar: Grammar term, short for 'collective noun'.
Patterns
- a collective noun
'Committee' is a collective that can take a singular or plural verb in British English.
Choose the right collective for the group of birds.
The teacher asked us to list five collectives.
Word forms
| plural | collectives |
|---|
Common combinations
- collective effort
- Finishing on time took a collective effort.
- collective responsibility
- The cabinet accepted collective responsibility.
- collective bargaining
- Collective bargaining gave workers a stronger voice.
- collective memory
- The tragedy lives in the collective memory.
- collective noun
- 'Flock' is a collective noun.
Synonyms and how they differ
- joint
- Joint is used for two or a few people sharing something, as in a joint account, while collective suggests a larger group.
- communal
- Communal stresses shared use of a space or resources, whereas collective stresses acting together.
- shared
- Shared is the everyday word and carries no sense of group action.
- combined
- Combined simply means added together, without any idea of group unity.
Opposites
Word family
- collectively adverb
- all together as a group
- collectivism noun
- the belief that the group matters more than the individual
- collectivize verb
- to put land or industry under group ownership
- collect verb
- to gather together
Commonly confused: collective or collected?
collective vs collected
Collected means gathered, or calm and in control, as in 'cool, calm and collected'. Collective describes a group acting as one.
Practice
The success of the project was a ___ achievement of the entire team.
Choose one answer.
Collective describes something done by a whole group together. Collected means gathered or calm, and the other forms do not work as adjectives before 'achievement'.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “collective”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.