collection

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or process of collecting.
2. n. A group of objects or works to be seen, studied, or kept together.
3. n. A line of products produced for one season, as those developed by a designer: promoted the summer collection in the store window.
4. n. An accumulation; a deposit: a collection of dust on the piano.
5. n. A collecting of money, as in church.
6. n. The sum so collected.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act or practice of collecting or of gathering together: as, the collection of rare books.
2. n. An assemblage or gathering of objects; a number of things collected, gathered, or brought together; a number of objects considered as constituting one whole of which the single objects are parts: as, a collection of pictures; a collection of essays; a collection of minerals.
3. n. Specifically A sum of money collected for religious or charitable purposes, especially during a religious service.
4. n. The act of deducing consequences; inference from premises; that which is deduced or inferred; an inference; sometimes, specifically, an inductive inference.
5. n. A private examination at the end of each term at the colleges of the English universities.
6. n. The act of receiving or compelling payment of dues, public or private, as for taxes, customs duties, or personal debts.
7. n. The jurisdiction of a collector; a collectorship. See collector, 3.
8. n. Synonyms Assemblage, group, crowd, mass, lot, heap; compilation, selection.
9. n. Contribution.
10. n. In logic, many independent or discrete objects regarded as a single object composed of these objects. In this sense ‘many’ is to be taken as including the case of a single object regarded as being composed of itself alone. The modern logicomathematical science of multitude (often called the theory of cardinal numbers) relates to the magnitudes of collections.
11. n. A plural object: an individual object whose existence consists in the existence of whatever individuals may have been mentally connected and regarded as parts of it. Different logicians and mathematicians have different objects in mind in speaking of a ‘collection,’ without always recognizing that they are at cross-purposes. Most logicians are in the habit of thinking of objects as they would be if they were real, so that each is assumed to be in itself definitely distinguished from every other. With them, the identity of a collection lies in the identity of its individual members; so that whatever metamorphoses the different individuals might undergo, as long as their identities were conserved, that of the collection would remain. But if an individual member is destroyed or a new one created, a different collection is produced, though the definition of the class (which is a collection recognized as consisting of whatever existent objects possess a certain common character) may be unchanged. Most writers on pure mathematics, on the other hand, are in the habit of studying objects that are purely hypothetical, without any consideration of whether any such objects exist. These objects, being mere creatures of thought, possess only such individuality as is determinately predicated of them. They are what the logicians term ‘indesignate individuals,’ a name which fails to recognize the extrinsic, superimposed character of their individuality. A mathematician, for example, will think of a collection consisting of a dot, of a dot expressly supposed to be other than the former, and of a dot expressly supposed to be neither of the others. These dots, being mere creatures of thought, are entirely alike as long as they are not thought as unlike. But being expressly supposed to be each other than either of two, so they necessarily are in their hypothetical being. Thus the mathematician's collection, being a mere creature of thought, changes its identity as soon as it is altered at all, unless it be expressly supposed to remain the same collection. The logician's collection is also created by thought, but it is thought to exist in the real existence of its individual members. Thus the logician's collection has a derived existence distinct from its essence, which latter lies in the intention of the act of thought which severs the universe into two portions, the one to form the inside and the other the outside of the collection. Accordingly, a logician's collection may contain but a single member with which the collection is identical in existence, although its essence refers also to everything excluded. So, too, if to the question, ‘What is in this box?’ the answer be, ‘Nothing,’ this word, as a reply to that question, signifies the essence of a collection, namely of the one sole logical collection which has no existence.

Wiktionary

1. n. A set of items or objects procured or gathered together by a person, group, or other agent.
2. n. Multiple related objects associated as a group.
3. n. The activity of collecting.
4. n. topology, analysis A set of sets.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act or process of collecting or of gathering.
2. n. That which is collected.
3. n. A gathering or assemblage of objects or of persons.
4. n. A gathering of money for charitable or other purposes, as by passing a contribution box for freewill offerings.
5. n. That which is obtained in payment of demands.
6. n. An accumulation of any substance.
7. n. obsolete The act of inferring or concluding from premises or observed facts; also, that which is inferred.
8. n. engraving The jurisdiction of a collector of excise.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. request for a sum of money
2. n. the act of gathering something together
3. n. a publication containing a variety of works
4. n. several things grouped together or considered as a whole