collection

Noun

collection (countable and uncountable, plural collections)

1. A set of items or amount of material procured, gathered or presented together.
   • The attic contains a remarkable collection of antiques, oddities, and random junk.
   • The asteroid belt consists of a collection of dust, rubble, and minor planets.
2. A set of pitch classes used by a composer.
   • The "collectional information" one receives is ambiguous since the collection { C, E, F, G, A } occurs in the key of C and in the key of F.2005, Neil Minturn, The Last Waltz of The Band, page 112
   • In fact, students are often taught that specific collections—diatonic, octatonic, and whole-tone, etc.—typify these composers' compositional language.2009, Brian Moseley, “Form and Transpositional Combination in George Crumb's Lux Aeterna”, in Bruce Quaglia, Jack Boss, editors, Musical Currents from the Left Coast, page 174
3. The activity of collecting.
   • Collection of trash will occur every Thursday.
4. A set of sets; used because such a thing is in general too large to comply with the formal definition of a set.
5. A gathering of money for charitable or other purposes, as by passing a contribution box for donations.
   • The people here are very good to each other, too. When someone's house burned down, when someone was in the hospital, they took up collections for the people.1976 February 7, Rose Flower, quoting Jimmy McGrath, “Playland: The Friendliest Place In Town”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 32, page 13
6. Debt collection.
7. (obsolete) The act of inferring or concluding from premises or observed facts; also, that which is inferred.
   • We may safely say thus, that wrong collections have been hitherto made out of those words by modern divines.1643, J[ohn] M[ilton], The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: […], London: […] T[homas] P[aine] and M[atthew] S[immons] […], →OCLC
8. (UK) The jurisdiction of a collector of excise.
9. (plural-normally, Oxford University) A set of college exams generally taken at the start of the term.
10. The quality of being collected; calm composure.