Word.ws English Dictionary

collect

/kəˈlɛkt//ˈkɑlɪkt/

collect verb: to gather together; amass.

Verb

collect (third-person singular simple present collects, present participle collecting, simple past and past participle collected)

  1. (transitive) To gather together; amass.
    • Suzanne collected all the papers she had laid out.
    • The team uses special equipment to collect data on temperature, wind speed and rainfall.
    Synonyms:
    aggregate
  2. (transitive) To get; particularly, get from someone.
    • A bank collects a monthly payment on a client's new car loan. A mortgage company collects a monthly payment on a house.
    • The EPA collects emissions data from more than 20,000 industrial facilities across the country and has even developed its own state-of-the-art tool — the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators model — to estimate the impact of toxic emissions on human health.2021 November 2, Lylla Younes, Ava Kofman, Al Shaw and Lisa Song, “Poison in the Air”, in ProPublica
    Synonyms:
    receive
  3. (transitive) To accumulate (a number of similar or related objects), particularly for a hobby or recreation.
    • John Henry collects stamps.
    • I don't think he collects as much as hoards.
    Synonyms:
    amound
  4. (transitive) To pick up or fetch
    • Can you collect me from the airport?
  5. (archaic, transitive) To form a conclusion; to deduce, infer. (Compare gather, get.)
    • […] which consequence, I conceive, is very ill collected.1690, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XVII, section 20
    • From the latter passages we may collect, that the expression "he that cometh" was, with the Jews, a kind of title distinguishing the Messiahc 1725, John Walker, William Burton (of Bloomsbury), Essays and correspondence, chiefly on Scriptural subjects
  6. (intransitive, often with on or against) To collect payments.
    • He had a lot of trouble collecting on that bet he made.
  7. (intransitive) To come together in a group or mass.
    • The rain collected in puddles.
    Synonyms:
    group
  8. (transitive) To infer; to conclude.
    • Whence some collect that the former word imports a plurality of persons.1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London
    Synonyms:
    assume, construe
  9. (transitive) To collide with or crash into (another vehicle or obstacle).
    • The truck veered across the central reservation and collected a car that was travelling in the opposite direction.

Adjective

collect (not comparable)

  1. To be paid for by the recipient, as a telephone call or a shipment.
    • It was to be a collect delivery, but no-one was available to pay.

Adverb

collect (not comparable)

  1. With payment due from the recipient.
    • I had to call collect.

Noun

collect (plural collects)

  1. (capitalized, sometimes) The prayer said before the reading of the epistle lesson, especially one found in a prayerbook, as with the Book of Common Prayer.
    • He used the day's collect as the basis of his sermon.

collect meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

collect in Hindi

to gather together
शामिल होने śāmil hone, इकट्ठा करना ikaṭṭhā karnā
to collect payments
उगाहना ugāhnā

collect in Tamil

சேர், தண்டல் செய், திரட்டு, தொகு, பணம் சேர், சேகரி

collect in Marathi

to collect
जमवणे jamavṇe
to collect, gather
गोळा करणे goḷā karṇe

collect in Urdu

to collect, to gather, to accumulate
بٹورنا baṭornā
More languagesFewer languages
collect in Bengali
হ্রস্ব প্রার্থনা, সংগ্রহ করা, কুড়ান, জুটা
collect in Telugu
కుప్పించు kuppiñcu, వేయు vēyu, వేసుకొను vēsukonu, కలయు kalayu
collect in Malayalam
ശേഖരിയ്ക്കുക śēkhariykkuka
collect in Kannada
ನೆರಸು, ನೆರೆಪು, ಕಲೆಹಾಕು, ಆಯು
collect in Punjabi
ਜੋੜਨਾ joṛnā
collect in Gujarati
એકત્રિત કરો, એકત્ર કરો
collect in Sanskrit
डम्भ् ḍambh, मक्ष् makṣ, चि ci, चिनोति cinóti
collect in Assamese
গোটোৱা gütüa, তোলা tüla
collect in Nepali
सङ्कलन गर्नुहोस्, सङ्कलन गर्ने
collect in Arabic
جَمَعَ jamaʕa
collect in Persian
جمع کردن jam' kardan, فراهمیدن, جمعیدن, جمعادن
collect in Thai
เก็บ gèp, สะสม sàsŏm, รวบรวม rûap ruam
collect in Vietnamese
thu thập, gom góp, lấy, thu

Examples of collect in a sentence

  • My friend from school has started to collects mangas and novels recently
  • The Missouri Botanical Garden is one of three institutions collecting tropical plants for the National Cancer Institute in hopes of finding new drugs for treatment.1990 August, Boyd Gibbons, “Missouri's Garden of Consequence”, in National Geographic, volume 178, number 2, page 131:
  • 'I collect,' said Miss Crawford, 'that Sotherton is an old place, and a place of some grandeur.1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park:
  • the riot is so great that it is very difficult to collect what is being said.1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, pages 292–3:

All 40 example sentences with collect

Synonyms of collect

5 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of collect

Forms of collect

Verb
third-person singular presentcollects
present participlecollecting
past participlecollected
pastcollected
second-person singular present (archaic)collectest
second-person singular past (archaic)collectedst
third-person singular present (archaic)collecteth
Noun
pluralcollects

Past tense of collect: collected

Origin of collect

From Middle English collecten, a borrowing from Old French collecter, from Medieval Latin collectare (“to collect money”), from Latin collecta (“a collection of money, in Late Latin a meeting, assemblage, in Medieval Latin a tax, also an assembly for prayer, a prayer”), feminine of collectus, past participle of colligere, conligere (“to gather together, collect, consider, conclude, infer”), from com- (“together”) + legere (“to gather”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to gather, collect”).

From Middle English collecte, from Ecclesiastical Latin collēcta (“assembly; collect”), originally designating the gathering at the beginning of a liturgical celebration.

Words formed from collect

Phrases with collect

Words that rhyme with collect

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about collect

What does collect mean?
Collect means to gather together; amass.
What is collect in Hindi?
Collect in Hindi is शामिल होने (śāmil hone), इकट्ठा करना (ikaṭṭhā karnā), उगाहना (ugāhnā). See Collect meaning in Hindi.
How do you use collect in a sentence?
My friend from school has started to collects mangas and novels recently
What part of speech is collect?
Collect can be a verb, an adjective, an adverb or a noun.
How do you pronounce collect?
Collect is pronounced /kəˈlɛkt/.
What is the past tense of collect?
The past tense of collect is collected.

Words near collect in the dictionary

  1. colleagued
  2. colleagues
  3. colleagueship
  4. colleagueships
  5. colleaguing
  6. collect
  7. collect call
  8. collect calls
  9. collect dust
  10. collect like infinity stones
  11. collect on delivery

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: collect (page history and authors); collect (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); गोळा करणे (Marathi) (page history and authors); بٹورنا (Urdu) (page history and authors); collect (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); కలయు (Telugu) (page history and authors); collect (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਜੋੜਨਾ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); collect (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); चि (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); collect (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “collect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/collect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.