Collective noun for "facts"

Consider brief, précis, survey, overview, conspectus, digest, compilation, compendium, collation, corpus. A brief, for example, is "An attorney's legal argument in written form..." but formerly was also used as "A summary, précis or epitome; an abridgement or abstract", which all are forms of collections of facts. Collation is a surprisingly versatile word, the relevant meaning here being "A collection, a gathering" rather than "5. Any light meal or snack" or more-specialized "2. The Collationes Patrum ...", "3. A reading held from the work mentioned above...", and "4. The light meal taken by monks after the reading service mentioned above". For survey the relevant meaning is "A particular view; an examination ... of all the parts or particulars of a thing", which is how it is used in the phrase survey article, "... a paper that is a work of synthesis, ... a survey or summary of a field".

Update 1 I disagree in general with the comment

Each of the above defines the way the facts have been compiled, the nature of the source, or something qualifie[d]. None of them seems to be an unqualified substitute for 'a collection of facts'. – Kris

but will address it only for compendium. Wiktionary shows "1. A short, complete summary; an abstract" and "2. A list or collection of various items". To a question like "Have you got anything about it?", one could reasonably reply either of

Here is a compendium of facts for you to look at.
Here is a compendium for you to look at.

but in the former "of facts" seems redundant.

Note, compendious is an adjective for which Wiktionary shows "1. containing a subset..., succinctly described; abridged and summarized" and "2. briefly describing a body of knowledge". Certainly the latter sense is appropriate for "collection of facts". On the other hand, the definition and synonyms of it inject a qualification of brevity.


For empirical facts, you sometimes see data.

For more diverse facts, while it's not a single word, body of knowledge might be what you're looking for.


More simply, you could just say, the truth.


Technically, something whose elements are individual facts is referred to as information, as in 'latest information about sth.'. The trick is to embed the word information in a suitable sentence to convey the meaning clearly and unambiguously for the context.


This page suggests a miscellany of facts.

Since nothing seems to be definitive, you could probably make one up that fits in with what you are writing about:

  • an inconvenience of facts (if you're Al Gore).
  • an over-abundance of facts (if you're confused by their number).