Other forms: collided, colliding, collides
To collide is to crash into something while moving. Two trolleys meeting at the end of a supermarket aisle; a cyclist and a car door that opens at the wrong moment.
It nearly always takes WITH: the van collided with a lamppost. Two things can also collide with each other, and news reports reach for the word whenever metal meets metal. Physics uses it flat and plainly — particles collide inside an accelerator. The figurative use is common too: plans collide, two cultures collide, her work and her family life kept colliding. Keep the force in mind. People who bump gently in a corridor bump; collide wants speed and damage. The noun for the event is collision, not a collide.
1verbcollideTo crash into something, or into each other, while moving.
“The two boats collided in thick fog.”
2verbideasOf ideas, plans or groups: to be in strong conflict.
“Their plans for the weekend collided badly.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Collide is Latin, straight through: collīdō meant to clash or strike together, built from con-, together, and laedō, to strike or injure. The same laedō sits inside lesion, a word for damage done to the body.
Latin
collīdō — to clash, strike, dash, beat, or press together
English, today
collide
From Latin collīdō (“to clash, strike, dash, beat, or press together”), from con- + laedō (whence col-).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA