Page "Collective noun" Paragraph 13

Two good examples of collective nouns are " team " and " government ", which are both words referring to groups of ( usually ) people.

Both " team " and " government " are count nouns.

( Consider: " one team ", " two teams ", " most teams "; " one government ", " two governments ", " many governments ").

However, confusion often stems from the fact that plural verb forms are often used in British English with the singular forms of these count nouns ( for example: " The team have finished the project .").

Conversely, in the English language as a whole, singular verb forms can often be used with nouns ending in "- s " that were once considered plural ( for example: " Physics is my favorite academic subject ").

This apparent " number mismatch " is actually a quite natural and logical feature of human language, and its mechanism is a subtle metonymic shift in the thoughts underlying the words.