collocation
6 synonyms and 0 antonyms for collocation, grouped by meaning and by how common each one is.
Noun — A pair or group of words that habitually occur together and sound natural to native speakers, such as heavy rain or make a decision.
Synonyms
Everyday swaps
Common words most readers know — safe in any writing.
Less common
Still standard English, but they carry more weight.
Rare, literary or technical
Precise, but they will stand out — check the sense before using one.
Synonyms by Meaning
1. noun linguistics
A pair or group of words that habitually occur together and sound natural to native speakers, such as heavy rain or make a decision.
“Learners often produce grammatical sentences that break basic collocations, such as saying strong rain.”
2. noun formal
The act of placing things side by side, or the arrangement that results.
“The collocation of the two portraits invites comparison.”
How to Use Collocation
The word patterns that sound natural to a native speaker.
Mainly a term in language teaching and linguistics; the countable sense listing individual pairings is the common one.
Etymology
From Latin collocare meaning to place together, from com- with and locare to place.
Full origin of collocation →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between a collocation and an idiom?
A collocation still means what its words mean; heavy rain is simply a lot of rain, it just happens to be the pairing English prefers. An idiom means something the words do not say, such as spill the beans. Collocations are about naturalness, idioms about hidden meaning.
Why do collocations matter for learners?
Because grammar alone does not make a sentence sound right. Saying make homework instead of do homework is perfectly clear but immediately marks the speaker as non-native, so collocations are learned as whole units.
Is collocation the same as colocation?
No. Colocation, spelled with one L, is a business term for renting space to place your equipment in someone else's facility. The two words are unrelated despite the similar look.