Besides considering persons, animals, and things separately, we may think of them in groups, and appropriate names to the groups.
Thus, men in groups may be called a crowd, or a mob, a committee, or a council, or a congress, etc.
These are called COLLECTIVE NOUNS. They properly belong under common nouns, because each group is considered as a unit, and the name applied to it belongs to any group of its class.
Names for things thought of in mass.
6. The definition given for common nouns applies more strictly to class nouns. It may, however, be correctly used for another group of nouns detailed below; for they are common nouns in the sense that the names apply to every particle of similar substance, instead of to each individual or separate object.
They are called MATERIAL NOUNS. Such are glass, iron, clay, frost, rain, snow, wheat, wine, tea, sugar, etc.
They may be placed in groups as follows:—
(1) The metals: iron, gold, platinum, etc.
(2) Products spoken of in bulk: tea, sugar, rice, wheat, etc.
(3) Geological bodies: mud, sand, granite, rock, stone, etc.