Are Collective Nouns Singular or Plural?

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Are Collective Nouns Singular or Plural?

Treat a collective noun (e.g., team, group, company) as singular unless you have a good reason to treat it as plural.

A collective noun can be singular or plural depending on the sense of the sentence. If it's too hard to make a decision on singular or plural, precede your collective noun with a term like "members of," forcing you to go plural. For example:

• The team is showing signs of frustration.
(This is correct.)
• The team are showing signs of frustration or anger.
(Sometimes it feels wrong to treat a collective noun as singular because the context puts the focus on the individuals within the team. Using a plural verb is perfectly grammatical, but it might annoy some of your readers.)
• The members of the team are showing signs of frustration or anger.
(Using "members of" forces a plural verb and removes any awkwardness felt with a singular verb.)

More about Collective Nouns

A collective noun is the word used to represent a group of people, animals, or things. "Group," "team," and "crowd" are examples of collective nouns. You should match your collective noun with a singular verb (e.g., the group is, the team believes, the crowd was moving) unless the context of your sentence makes a singular verb seem awkward or wrong.

Therefore, a collective noun can be singular or plural depending on the sense of the sentence. Look at this example:

• The shoal was moving north.
(Here, the shoal is considered as a single unit; therefore, "shoal" is singular.)

However, on occasion, the context means that a singular verb feels wrong:

• The shoal were darting in all directions.
(In this example, "shoal" is treated as plural because the context puts the focus on the individuals within the group.)

Add a Word to Avoid the Issue

To simplify matters, a word for the individuals within the group can be introduced. In the first example below, it is necessary to decide whether the collective noun "jury" should be singular or plural. However, by adding "members of," you are forced to use a plural verb.

• The jury is/are to convene at 4 o'clock.
(With this example, the writer must decide whether to treat "jury" as singular or plural.)
• The members of the jury are to convene at 4 o'clock.
(With "the members of" added, no decision is required – the verb must be plural.)

What Is a Collective Noun?

A collective noun is a word that represents a group. For example:

• committee, board, team, jury, family, choir, group

A collective noun is a type of common noun.

Terms of Venery
Words used to describe a specific group of things (usually animals) are called "terms of venery." They are also collective nouns. Examples:

• colony of ants
• hive of bees
• school of dolphins
• parliament of owls
• cloud of bats
• a mob of kangaroos

Read more about the different types of nouns.

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