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Collection vs Collectable - What's the difference?

collection | collectable |

As nouns the difference between collection and collectable

is that collection is a set of items or amount of material procured or gathered together while collectable is anything that someone might want to collect.

As an adjective collectable is

suitable for collecting.

collection

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A set of items or amount of material procured or gathered together.
  • *
  • Secondly, I continue to base my concepts on intensive study of a limited suite of collections , rather than superficial study of every packet that comes to hand.
  • * (William Whewell)
  • Collections of moisture.
  • * Dunglison
  • A purulent collection .
  • Multiple related objects associated as a group.
  • * , chapter=5
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.}}
  • The activity of collecting.
  • (topology, analysis) A set of sets.
  • A gathering of money for charitable or other purposes, as by passing a contribution box for donations.
  • (obsolete) The act of inferring or concluding from premises or observed facts; also, that which is inferred.
  • * (John Milton)
  • We may safely say thus, that wrong collections have been hitherto made out of those words by modern divines.
  • (UK) The jurisdiction of a collector of excise.
  • A set of college exams generally taken at the start of the term.
  • Derived terms

    * collection agency * collection plate * minicollection * take up a collection

    collectable

    English

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Suitable for collecting.
  • Noun

    (en noun)
  • Anything that someone might want to collect.
  • Alternative forms

    * collectible (American English)