What is a noun? “People, place, thing, idea!” What is a “Collective noun?” A collective noun refers to a group or collection of things! Collectives are referred to as “One” when we use an “Article”. Often, a collective noun is preceded by “The”. Some examples are “The furniture, the fruit, the money, the people etc.” All of these nouns refer to a group! Collective nouns as a group can be referred to as “One” but we must quantify it first! There are very specific quantifiers for collective nouns. They are called "Partitives". Some examples are “A class of students, a crowd of people, a flock of birds, a fleet of ships”.