Collective Nouns
Collective nouns refer to groups of people, animals, or things.Examples:
family, flock, group, herd, team
Example sentences:
The audience clapped wildly at the end of the play.
I love my stamp collection!
A class is made up of a group of students acting as one whole, an audienceis made up of a group of people acting as one whole, and a collection is made up of a group of things (in this case, stamps) acting as one whole.
Singular or Plural?
So, what do you think? Are they singular or plural? They name things that come together to act as one group.
If you said singular, you're right!
Even though each of these nouns is made up of many people, animals, or things, it names the group as a whole, which means that it is a singular noun.
You can make them plural the same way that you make other nouns plural. Usually, this means adding an s or es at the end of the word.
Singular | Plural |
class | classes |
crowd | crowds |
family | families |
flock | flocks |
For instance, schools are made up of more than one class of students. Because of this, we would say that there are multiple classes in a school.