Middle English: via Old French from Latin collatio(n-), from conferre (see confer). Originally (in the plural) the term denoted John Cassian's Collationes Patrum in Scetica Eremo Commorantium ‘Conferences of, or with, the Egyptian Hermits’ (AD 415–20), from which a reading would be given in Benedictine communities prior to a light meal (see collation (sense 2))