Noun

Bringing together.

# The act of bringing things together and comparing them; comparison.

(Alexander Pope)

# The act of collating pages or sheets of a book, or from printing etc.

# A collection, a gathering.

#* 2010 , Will Dean, The Guardian , 29 Apr 2010:

It's fantastic, as is so much of Forgiveness Rock Record, a collation of so many talents that it's practically bursting at the seams.

Discussion, light meal.

# (obsolete) A conference or consultation.

# (in the plural) The Collationes Patrum in Scetica Eremo Commorantium by (John Cassian), an important ecclesiastical work. (Now usually with capital initial.)

#* 1563 , John Foxe, Acts and Monuments , vol. 2, p. 55:

A certain abbot, named Moses, thus testifieth of himself in the Collations of Cassianus, that he so afflicted himself with much fasting and watching, that sometimes, for two or three days together, not only he felt no appetite to eat, but also had no remembrance of any meat at all

# A reading held from the work mentioned above, as a regular service in Benedictine monasteries.

#* 1843 , TD Fosbroke, British Monachism , p. 52:

When the hymn was over the Sacrist was to strike the table for collation , and the Deacon to enter with the Gospel, preceded by three converts, carrying the candlestick and censer.

# The light meal taken by monks after the reading service mentioned above.

# Any light meal or snack.

#* 2008 , Tim Hayward, The Guardian , 13 May 08:

Yes, absolutely; supper, at least in English tradition, was a cold collation , left out by cook before retiring.

(ecclesiastical) The presentation of a clergyman to a benefice by a bishop, who has it in his own gift.

(legal, Scotland) An heir's right to combine the whole heritable and movable estates of the deceased into one mass, sharing it equally with others who are of the same degree of kindred.

(obsolete) The act of conferring or bestowing.

* Francis Bacon

Not by the collation of the king but by the people.

Noun

(uncountable) The quality of being organized.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure. Yet this is the level of organisation that does the actual thinking—and is, presumably, the seat of consciousness.}}

(uncountable) The way in which something is organized, such as a book or an article.

(countable) A group of people or other legal entities with an explicit purpose and written rules.

(countable) A group of people consciously cooperating.

(baseball) A major league club and all its farm teams.