Collective nouns

What are collective nouns? These are words used to represent a group of people, things, and so on. For example, family, cabinet, crowd, shoal, bevy, gaggle, team, army, &c.

The question is whether to use a singular or plural verb with collective nouns.

Generally speaking

Collective nouns are treated as singular. So we say:

• • • His family is coming to the base station to see him off.
    • The team is all fired up for the next match.
    • The cabinet is agreed upon the first draft of the bill.
    • The government has announced structural reforms in eight sectors.

However

In case there is a disagreement, or the members of the group act differently, the collective noun acts as a plural. So, we have:

• The family are coming to Delhi for Diwali.

It means, they’re coming from different places, or by different means.

• The team are not comfortable with the manager’s decision.

It means some members are okay, but the others are not. There’s a split in the team.

• The cabinet have put forth three different proposals for fighting the economic sluggishness.

It means, some members have come up with one proposal, some others back yet another, and a third group has a third suggestion.

• The government have different takes on how to deal with black money.

 This means a divide in the government.

But

The point to be noted is, in UK, they prefer to use the plural verb as a rule. So they say:

• The whole class are going on a picnic.
• The committee have issued the guidelines to meet the lockdown restrictions.
• The government have decided on a five-point charter to tackle the terrorist activities.

But we have some exceptions. Generally army is used as a singular noun, while police is plural. So, we say:

The army has deployed its Fourth Battalion in the Thar.

However, beware that in British English, army is used in the plural sense. So, they say,

The army are…!

The police are very strict about violation of traffic rules.

Be careful!

The subject-verb agreement

When the collective noun is used in the plural form, the relevant pronoun should also be in the plural, and vice versa. So we say:

• In its report, the committee has suggested several measures.

AND

• In their report, the committee have suggested several measures.

A final word

Most of the collective nouns are only of academic interest. They ask you in school to torture you! Even native speakers don’t use them regularly. In fact most don’t even know of them!

Some of the more common collective nouns are:

audience	company	group	public
class	council	majority	police
club	family	minority	school
committee	firm	parliament	team

So, we don’t really bother if it’s a shoal of fish or a school of fish, we generally say some fish. So, unless you have an English Nazi amidst you, don’t even bother learning these weird words!

All the best!