Definition of "collect"

Energy has seldom been found where we need it when we want it. Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame.

2013 July-August, Henry Petroski, “Geothermal Energy”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 4

Over the course of 60 years, W E Hayward collected thousands of railway-related objects, including clothing, buttons, cutlery, timetables, tickets, name, number and builder's plates, books and booklets, cuttings and extracts from publications, letters, photographs and postcards.

2020 June 17, Stefanie Foster, “A window into the railways of the past”, in Rail, page 54

[…] which consequence, I conceive, is very ill collected.

1690, John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XVII, section 20

From the latter passages we may collect, that the expression "he that cometh" was, with the Jews, a kind of title distinguishing the Messiah

c 1725, John Walker, William Burton (of Bloomsbury), Essays and correspondence, chiefly on Scriptural subjects

'I collect,' said Miss Crawford, 'that Sotherton is an old place, and a place of some grandeur. In any particular style of building?'

1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

the riot is so great that it is very difficult to collect what is being said.

1992, Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, Harper Perennial, published 2007, pages 292–3

Whence some collect that the former word imports a plurality of persons.

1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 6th edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] J[ames] Bettenham, for Jonah Bowyer, […], published 1727