The audience are?

[rich7]

Test No. incompl/inter-13 "At the Theatre", question 7

The ......... were so carried away with the acting that at the end of the play they all stood up and applauded.

(a) spectators
(b) watchers
(c) listeners
(d) audience

Test No. incompl/inter-13 "At the Theatre", answer 7

The audience were so carried away with the acting that at the end of the play they all stood up and applauded.

Correct answer: (d) audience

Your answer was: incorrect
The spectators were so carried away with the acting that at the end of the play they all stood up and applauded.
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""Audience"" singular or plural?

[Alan]

Both singular and plural are acceptable after collective nouns as in: The Government is/are planning .....
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English as a Second Language
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[FrankU]

Hi, a happy New Year 2005 to all of you my friends Can you please tell more about collective nouns, I mean how many are there in the English language? I suppose the word team is a collective noun too? What about the word group?

[Torsten]

Hi FrankU,

You have a good 2005 too. As for your question is a great variety of collective nouns and the total number of words might be several thousands. Amongst the most frequently used ones are probably the following:

team
family
company
group
committee
crew
army
faculty
board
staff
personnel
band
gang
crowd
squad
panel
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[Guest]

Many collective nouns desribe groups of animals such as herd of antelopes, swarm of ants, culture of bacteria or swarm of birds, etc.