Collective nouns are words that represent a group of individuals or things. For example: a team of footballers, a choir of angels or a shoal of fish. You can see that we use a singular form for collective nouns but a plural form for the noun they describe as a group.
COLLECTIVE NOUNS WITH REAL NAMES
The only way to remember collective nouns is to remember which collective noun goes with which real name. The following infographic gives some examples of the most popular collective nouns
So you can learn the list but then the question is: are collective nouns plural or singular?
The question becomes more complex when we use a real name for a team or a group. West Ham is the name of a Premier League football team based in east London. It’s the team I support; passionately. So should I say West Ham is my favourite football team or West Ham are my favourite football team? Let’s find out.
COLLECTIVE NOUNS – SINGULAR OR PLURAL?
Collective nouns can be singular or plural depending on the meaning of the sentence. We will use a singular form when the sense of the collective noun is as a single unit. We use a plural form in the sentence when the sense of the sentence is a group of individuals.
Examples are the best way to understand this difference.
- A herd of deer is moving towards the road. This indicates that the group of deer is moving together as a single unit (towards the road)
- A herd of deer are moving across the field in various directions. The plural form is used as the herd is moving but not as one unit but individually.
Even though we use the singular preposition ‘a’ in the second example, we use the plural form ‘are’ to describe the group as they are all moving but as individuals.
Another example:
- We watch as the flotilla of ships has arrived in the harbour. The group of ships are arrived together as one unit into the harbour so we use the third person singular form of the verb to have; has.
- The flotilla of ships have finally arrived. The group of ships arrived at different times. We use the plural form have to show flotilla is now a plural as the group of ships now arrived at the harbour didn’t come together.
SOMETIMES IT’S NOT OBVIOUS
The previous examples were clear cut but sometimes the sentence is more vague:
The gang (of labourers) is to return after lunch or the gang of labourers are to return after lunch?
Here we have to make a decision whether we want to think of the gang as a unit or a group of individuals. I would probably use a singular form here as I expect them to return together but it wouldn’t be wrong to use the plural as they are also twelve individuals and maybe they all went somewhere else and returned one by one?
One way to avoid this problem when speaking or writing is to use the construction the members of (collective noun). Since members is a plural noun, we will be using plural forms.
The members of the gang are to return after lunch.
ONE UNIT OR A GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS?
For collective nouns we can use plural or singular forms depending on whether we want to show we’re talking about a unit acting collectively or a individually within a group.
As for the question about West Ham, by now you know that you can use either singular or plural forms. A real name describing a group follows the collective noun rules.
Therefore, it all depends whether I’m thinking of West Ham as a football club unit acting collectively or West Ham as a team of individual footballers.
I support both versions, plural or singular.
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