Colloquial

//kəˈləʊ.kwɪəl// adj, noun, slang

adj, noun, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A colloquial word or phrase, colloquialism.
Adjective
  1. 1
    Characteristic of familiar conversation, of common parlance; informal. colloquial, comparative

    "You're using too many colloquial words in this cover letter: I suggest changing "I picked up loads of cool skills" to "I acquired many positive abilities""

  2. 2
    Of or pertaining to a conversation; conversational or chatty. colloquial, comparative
Adjective
  1. 1
    characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
conversationalboycockboydickdickbirdiecasual

Example

More examples

"These stories are told in colloquial and everyday language."

Etymology

1751, from earlier term colloquy (“a conversation”), from Latin colloquium (“conference, conversation”), from con- (“together”) + loquor (“to speak”), + -al.

Related phrases

common parlance

More for "colloquial"

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