Collocate

//ˈkɒləkeɪt// adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A component word of a collocation; a word that collocates with another.

    "A list of collocations to accompany the SVL words providing their important lexico-grammatical associations could therefore be a useful supplementary resource. Thus, we took an extra step not present in previously developed academic wordlists and created lists of each word's discipline-specific collocates."

Verb
  1. 1
    (said of certain words) To be often used together, form a collocation; for example strong collocates with tea.
  2. 2
    group or chunk together in a certain order or place side by side wordnet
  3. 3
    To arrange or occur side by side.
  4. 4
    have a strong tendency to occur side by side wordnet
  5. 5
    To set or place or station in the same place as something else. obsolete, transitive

    "to marſhall and collocate in order his battayles"

Adjective
  1. 1
    Set; placed. not-comparable, obsolete

    "of that creature you must take the parts wherein that virtue chiefly is collocate"

Example

More examples

"The noun "rain" doesn't collocate with the adjective "busy.""

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin collocatum, supine of collocō. Doublet of couch.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.