Please Help
Raymond
"I found myself in a company with an understanding boss and a
..............of warm and friendly colleagues".
Thanks
Raymond
R H Draney
>
>Need to know the collective noun for "colleagues".
>"I found myself in a company with an understanding boss and a
>..............of warm and friendly colleagues".
How about "coterie"?...r
--
Evelyn Wood just looks at the pictures.
Raymond
"R H Draney" <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:g6a71...@drn.newsguy.com...
tony cooper
wrote:
>Need to know the collective noun for "colleagues".
>"I found myself in a company with an understanding boss and a
>..............of warm and friendly colleagues".
>
"group" or "staff" would work. Or, you can write "I found myself in a
company with an understanding boss and warm and friendly colleagues".
There's no need to use a collective noun.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
tony cooper
wrote:
>Thanks
>
>"R H Draney" <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
>news:g6a71...@drn.newsguy.com...
>> Raymond filted:
>>>
>>>Need to know the collective noun for "colleagues".
>>>"I found myself in a company with an understanding boss and a
>>>..............of warm and friendly colleagues".
>>
>> How about "coterie"?...r
>>
I wouldn't use "coterie". While the primary meaning is a group of
people who associate closely, it has a connotation of a clique or an
exclusive group. Use of "coterie" implies that some of the colleagues
are in the "in group", and that they are warm and friendly, but the
rest of his colleagues are not in the "in group" and not warm and
friendly. Of course, it's often this way in an office.
Don Phillipson
news:g69utj$1ik$1...@reader01.singnet.com.sg...
> Need to know the collective noun for "colleagues".
> "I found myself in a company with an understanding boss and a
> ..............of warm and friendly colleagues".
The collective noun for colleagues is probably team,
and your thesaurus may list better alternatives.
But is this really what you want?
" an understanding boss and a .......a warm and friendly team"
seems in no way better than
"an understanding boss and ....... warm and friendly colleagues."
You may have been seeking synonyms for colleagues
(viz. co-workers etc.) but those would not (necessarily) be
collective nouns.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Roland Hutchinson
The obvious collective for a collection of colleagues really ought to be
(although it is not) collegium.
m-w.com claims that "collegium" first comes into English via the Russian (at
the time of the Russian revolution). Color me skeptical.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
Adam Funk
> The obvious collective for a collection of colleagues really ought to be
> (although it is not) collegium.
College. ;-)
--
Bob just used 'canonical' in the canonical way. [Guy Steele]
CDB
Agreed. And, if you decide to use one, something neutral like "group"
beats the ones with connotations. Otherwise, I might have suggested
"cohort". I don't think I would say "staff" in that context unless
they were reporting to me.
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<my.sp...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>The obvious collective for a collection of colleagues really ought to be
>(although it is not) collegium.
>
>m-w.com claims that "collegium" first comes into English via the Russian (at
>the time of the Russian revolution). Color me skeptical.
OED:
collegium
[a. L. collegium (see COLLEGE n.), tr. Russ. kollégiya.]
In Russia: an advisory board or committee (see quots.).
1917 A. S. KAUN tr. Kornilov's Mod. Russ. Hist. I. ii. 43
Instead of the decayed prikazy (boards) he [sc. Peter the
Great] established after the Swedish model collegia, which
corresponded to the present ministries with the difference
that in the Collegium the power was not in the hands of a
single minister, but in the hands of from three to twelve
persons.
1948 J. TOWSTER Pol. Power in U.S.S.R. xi. 288 Attached to
the commissar and presided over by him, there was within
each commissariat a collegium, whose members were appointed
by the Sovnarkom.
1957 N. C. HUNT Guide to Communist Jargon x. 36 Reference
should also be made to the practice revived by the
Bolsheviks when they came into power, as it had in fact been
introduced by Peter the Great, of attaching to every
People's Commissar a Collegium of members of his
Commissariat which he was required to consult before
promulgating an order.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
tinwhistler
_Band of Brothers_ was a popular HBO movie 2001, so popular that you
could consider using BAND -- even though many of us would think
immediately of oboe players and ill winds. (I agree that GROUP
--
Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego
LaReina del Perros
wrote:
>Need to know the collective noun for "colleagues".
>"I found myself in a company with an understanding boss and a
>..............of warm and friendly colleagues".
If the context is very informal, I'd go with "bunch."
Maybe even if it's just less than super-formal. Certainly, in
spontaneous speech.
Roland Hutchinson
Tak, tovarishch. I get all that, but I'm seriously surprised that there
aren't earlier uses in English, referring to the ancient Roman collegia,
church institutions, or the like.
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<my.sp...@verizon.net> wrote:
I share your surprise.
Don Phillipson
news:g6as76$iia$1...@registered.motzarella.org...
> > OED:
> >
> > collegium
> >
> > [a. L. collegium (see COLLEGE n.), tr. Russ. kollégiya.]
> >
> > In Russia: an advisory board or committee (see quots.). . . .
> Tak, tovarishch. I get all that, but I'm seriously surprised that there
> aren't earlier uses in English, referring to the ancient Roman collegia,
> church institutions, or the like.
This is why the second line of the OED entry directs us to
COLLEGE, the English word used for centuries to identify
the communities making up Oxford and Cambridge Universities,
the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal Naval College, etc. etc.
COLLEAGUE has a very different history, being used in the
19th century mainly to mean people in the same line of
business (economic competitors perhaps, but still chums
on whom one has some collegial claim.) Colleague came
into use to mean fellow-employees (of the same employer)
only after 1950, probably borrowed from French, German,
Dutch or any of the other European languages that commonly
used colleague much earlier to mean fellow-employee.
E.g. a French professor writing an open letter, and seeking
to invoke collegiality, would begin: "Mes chers collegues. . . "
Even now, however, I doubt whether his British counterpart,
doing the same thing, would address "colleagues."
Frank ess
I'd likely say " ... a number of ... "
--
Frank ess
Glenn Knickerbocker
> m-w.com claims that "collegium" first comes into English via the Russian (at
> the time of the Russian revolution). Color me skeptical.
It would certainly explain why I've always heard it pronounced with a
hard G.
ŹR
Roland Hutchinson
True.
The collocation "collegium musicum", however, got borrowed intact from
German -- or Latin pronounced in the German manner (take your pick as it is
pretty much a distinction without a difference given the traditional status
of "Fremdwörter" in German). It got its hard G from there, rather than from
Russian.
Come to think of it: where did the Russians get the hard G in their Latin
loanwords from? An awful lot of tutoring of Russians in western matters
was done by Germans, so maybe from there?
K. Edgcombe
Don Phillipson <e9...@SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote:
>
>E.g. a French professor writing an open letter, and seeking
>to invoke collegiality, would begin: "Mes chers collegues. . . "
>Even now, however, I doubt whether his British counterpart,
>doing the same thing, would address "colleagues."
How odd. That is exactly what I would use, and I regularly receive such
letters. What would you say instead?
On the other hand, I think the French do use the word more generally than we
do; for instance, in talking to a student about his fellow-students, I might
say "tes collegues".
Katy
Nick Spalding
on Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:19:03 -0700:
To me that has the implication that some other number of colleagues are
not so warm and friendly.
--
Nick Spalding
BrE/IrE
LFS
> In article <g6atuc$ep5$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca>,
> Don Phillipson <e9...@SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote:
>> E.g. a French professor writing an open letter, and seeking
>> to invoke collegiality, would begin: "Mes chers collegues. . . "
>> Even now, however, I doubt whether his British counterpart,
>> doing the same thing, would address "colleagues."
>
> How odd. That is exactly what I would use, and I regularly receive such
> letters. What would you say instead?
Me too.
>
> On the other hand, I think the French do use the word more generally than we
> do; for instance, in talking to a student about his fellow-students, I might
> say "tes collegues".
>
Our students seem to use the word frequently as well, when referring to
the members of their working groups, for example.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
Roland Hutchinson
> K. Edgcombe wrote:
>> In article <g6atuc$ep5$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca>,
>> Don Phillipson <e9...@SPAMBLOCK.ncf.ca> wrote:
>>> E.g. a French professor writing an open letter, and seeking
>>> to invoke collegiality, would begin: "Mes chers collegues. . . "
>>> Even now, however, I doubt whether his British counterpart,
>>> doing the same thing, would address "colleagues."
>>
>> How odd. That is exactly what I would use, and I regularly receive such
>> letters. What would you say instead?
>
> Me too.
It's certainly quite normal and widespread among American academics as well.
Frank ess
Me, too, but then I'm a little bit of a pessimist, collegueally
speaking.
--
Frank ess