Etimology
From Middle English colleccioun, collection, from Old French collection, from Latin collēctiō, collēctiōnem, from collēctus, from colligō (“collect together”), composed of con- + legō (“bring together, gather, collect”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to gather, collect”).
noun
collection (countable and uncountable, plural collections)
A set of items or amount of material procured, gathered or presented together.
(music) A set of pitch classes used by a composer.
The activity of collecting.
(set theory, topology, mathematical analysis) A set of sets; used because such a thing is in general too large to comply with the formal definition of a set.
A gathering of money for charitable or other purposes, as by passing a contribution box for donations.
(law) Debt collection.
(obsolete) The act of inferring or concluding from premises or observed facts; also, that which is inferred.
(UK) The jurisdiction of a collector of excise.
(Oxford University, usually in the plural) A set of college exams generally taken at the start of the term.
The quality of being collected; calm composure.
Examples
The attic contains a remarkable collection of antiques, oddities, and random junk.
The asteroid belt consists of a collection of dust, rubble, and minor planets.
This year's Summer Collection will include a wide range of evening wear.
He has a superb coin collection.
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.
collections of moisture
a purulent collection
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 "collectional information" one receives is ambiguous since the collection { C, E, F, G, A } occurs in the key of C and in the key of F.
In fact, students are often taught that specific collections—diatonic, octatonic, and whole-tone, etc.—typify these composers' compositional language.
Simply put, the realm of available collections in a largely diatonic environment is much smaller than it is in truly atonal one.
Collection of trash will occur every Thursday.
We may safely say thus, that wrong collections have been hitherto made out of those words by modern divines.