Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

Susie Dent, perhaps?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susie_Dent

From COED:
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/massnoun?view=uk

   mass noun

   * noun a noun denoting something which cannot be counted, in
   English usually a noun which has no plural form and is not used
   with a or an, e.g. luggage, happiness. Contrasted with COUNT
   NOUN.

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/collectivenoun?view=uk
   collective noun
   
   * noun a noun that denotes a group of individuals (e.g.
   assembly, family).

In particular see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun

   Confounding of collective noun and mass noun
   
   There is often confusion about, and confounding of, the two
   different concepts of collective noun and mass noun. Generally,
   collective nouns are not mass (non-count) nouns, but rather are
   a special subset of count nouns. However, the term "collective
   noun" is often used to mean "mass noun" (even in some
   dictionaries), because users confound two different kinds of
   verb number invariability:

   (a) that seen with mass nouns such as "water" or "furniture",
   with which only singular verb forms are used because the
   constituent matter is grammatically nondiscrete (although it may
   ["water"] or may not ["furniture"] be etically
   nondiscrete); and

   (b) that seen with collective nouns, which is the result of the
   metonymical shift, discussed earlier, between the group and its
   (both grammatically and etically) discrete constituents.
   
   Some words, including "mathematics" and "physics", have
   developed true mass-noun senses despite having grown from
   count-noun roots.