collection

Noun

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.
   • This year's Summer Collection will include a wide range of evening wear.
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...
   • Simply put, the realm of available collections in a largely diatonic environment is much smaller than it is in truly atonal one. - 2012, Marguerite Boland, John Link, Elliott Carter Studies, page 22:
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,...
6. Debt collection.
7. 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...
8. The jurisdiction of a collector of excise.
9. A set of college exams generally taken at the start of the term.
10. The quality of being collected; calm composure.