collocation

UK/ˌkɒl.əˈkeɪ.ʃən/US/ˌkɑ.ləˈkeɪ.ʃən/

nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — locate sits at #2,428Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: collocations

A collocation is the habit two words have of going together. Learn the collocation.

You make a decision and take a photograph, and nobody can say quite why. Collocation is what makes a learner's English sound foreign long after the grammar is perfect.

Definitions of collocation

1nouncollocationThe habit two words have of going together.B2
“The collocation was wrong and the sentence sounded translated.”

collocation is a pattern.

Where it comes from

Latin collocatio, a putting together; the linguistic sense was established in 1951.

Latin
collocātiō — a putting together
English, today
collocation

Latin collocātiō (“a putting together”). by surface analysis, col- + location. The technical sense in linguistics was established in 1951, although it may actually be earlier. 1605.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

collocation in the wild

In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance.
Collocation
In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words that make it up.
Collocation
In mathematics, a collocation method is a method for the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations and integral equations.
Collocation method
Correct use of stretched verbs is about as difficult for EFL students as other types of collocation.
Stretched verb
A phrasal template is a phrase-long collocation that contains one or several empty slots which may be filled by words to produce individual phrases.
Phrasal template

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

collocation

UK/ˌkɒl.əˈkeɪ.ʃən/US/ˌkɑ.ləˈkeɪ.ʃən/

Other forms: collocations