collection

American  

[kuh-lek-shuhn] / kəˈlɛk ʃən /

noun

• collections
  plural

1. the act of collecting.

2. something that is collected; a group of objects or an amount of material accumulated in one location, especially for some purpose or as a result of some process: a collection of unclaimed hats in the checkroom;

   a stamp collection;

   a collection of unclaimed hats in the checkroom;

   a collection of books on Churchill.

   Synonyms:

   store, hoard, pile, heap, mass, aggregation, accumulation

3. the works of art constituting the holdings of an art museum.

   a history of the museum and of the collection.

4. the gathered or exhibited works of a single painter, sculptor, etc..

   an excellent Picasso collection.

5. collections, the various holdings of an art museum organized by category, as painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, or film.

   the director of the collections.

6. the clothes or other items produced by a designer, especially for a seasonal line.

   the spring collection.

7. a sum of money collected, especially for charity or church use.

   Synonyms:

   alms, contribution(s)

8. Manège. act of bringing or coming into a collected attitude.

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collection British  

/ kəˈlɛkʃən /

noun

1. the act or process of collecting

2. a number of things collected or assembled together

3. a selection of clothes, esp as presented by a particular designer for a specified season

4. something gathered into a mass or pile; accumulation

   a collection of rubbish

5. a sum of money collected or solicited, as in church

6. removal, esp regular removal of letters from a postbox

7. (often plural) (at Oxford University) a college examination or an oral report by a tutor

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• noncollection
  noun
• precollection
  noun
• subcollection
  noun
• collectional
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• collections
  plural

Etymology

Origin of collection

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English colleccioun, from Anglo-French, from Latin collēctiōn-, stem of collēctiō “a gathering together,” from collēct(us) “gathered together” (past participle of colligere; see collect ¹) + -iō -ion

Explanation

A collection is a group of things, often a group created by someone. For example, many kids have a collection of comic books. Notice the word collect in collection. If you like to collect — that is, gather — things, chances are you might have a collection of some sort. Some common types of collections are of books, stamps, and dolls. You can also refer to a museum's "collection of art." While you might call a group of people a gathering, you would call a group of rare coins a collection.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

collection collections

Like a popcorn movie, the evening ended happily with a drone show in the night sky narrated by Winfrey and Jackson, and featuring images from the museum’s collection including the Cave of Altamira, N.C.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2026

Some in my collection are Middleton Made Knives, handmade in the U.S., and Misono Knives from Japan.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 20, 2026

The newly identified Diplodocus therefore joins an already impressive collection of enormous sauropods known from the Spanish Jurassic.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 19, 2026

Customers this week snapped up limited-time gear from Starbucks’s “Peanuts” fall collection and McDonald’s new “SpongeBob SquarePants” toys — and now they’re being resold online for a premium.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 19, 2026

Mama went about gathering herbs from Babulya’s collection along the walls.

From Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack

The LGA said it had identified dozens of councils across Wales and England that had been forced to stop or restrict collections, with more expected to follow suit.

From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026

While both decisions cover the topic of race-based preference, neither even remotely addresses the constitutional status of data collections.

From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026

“Natural history collections are reservoirs of evidence, often used in ways no one could have predicted when they were first built,” said Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2026

The New York-based company uses AI technology in its software geared for use in urgent care centers where staff uses it for diagnosis, documentation, coding and collections, among other things.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026

But he had more of his collections to distribute to experts, and he had to urge them, coax them, to tell him what they thought.

From "Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith" by Deborah Heiligman

Related Words

• assemblage
• assortment
• compilation
• lot
• number
• selection
• set
• store