Noun

(en noun)

A number of things or persons being in some relation to one another.

* , chapter=5

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-19, author=(Peter Wilby)

, volume=189, issue=6, page=30, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Finland spreads word on schools , passage=Imagine a country where children do nothing but play until they start compulsory schooling at age seven. Then, without exception, they attend comprehensives until the age of 16. Charging school fees is illegal, and so is sorting pupils into ability groups by streaming or setting.}}

(group theory) A set with an associative binary operation, under which there exists an identity element, and such that each element has an inverse.

(geometry, archaic) An effective divisor on a curve.

A (usually small) group of people who perform music together.

(astronomy) A small number (up to about fifty) of galaxies that are near each other.

(chemistry) A column in the periodic table of chemical elements.

(chemistry) A functional entity consisting of certain atoms whose presence provides a certain property to a molecule, such as the methyl group.

(sociology) A subset of a culture or of a society.

(military) An air force formation.

(geology) A collection of formations or rock strata.

(computing) A number of users with same rights with respect to accession, modification, and execution of files, computers and peripherals.

An element of an espresso machine from which hot water pours into the portafilter.

(music) A number of eighth, sixteenth, etc., notes joined at the stems; sometimes rather indefinitely applied to any ornament made up of a few short notes.

(sports) A set of teams playing each other in the same division, while at the same time not playing teams that belong to other sets in the division.

*

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.