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.

Noun

(offertories)

(Christianity) An anthem formerly sung as part of the Roman Catholic Mass or during the corresponding part of the Anglican Communion.

* c.1390 , (Geoffrey Chaucer), Canterbury Tales :

But alderbest he sang an offertory : / For well he wiste, when that song was sung, / He muste preach […].

* 1922 , (Sinclair Lewis), Babbitt :

There was an impressive musical program, conducted by Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A., who also sang the offertory .

(Christianity) The part of the Eucharist service when offerings of bread and wine are placed on the altar and when any collection is taken; also, the money or other things collected.

* 1914 , (Stephen Leacock), Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich :

Before a month had passed the congregation at the evening service at St. Asaph's Church was so slender that the offertory , as Mr. Furlong senior himself calculated, was scarcely sufficient to pay the overhead charge of collecting it.

* 1922 , (Upton Sinclair), They Call Me Carpenter :

I sat through the sermon, and the offertory , and the recessional.

* 1971 , , Religion and the Decline of Magic , Folio Society 2012, p. 30:

Even the coins in the offertory were accredited with magical value; there were numerous popular superstitions about the magical value of communion silver as a cure for illness or a lucky charm against danger.