noun
- words that are habitually used together in a language, such as ‘strong coffee’ or ‘make a decision’
Usage: linguistics; plural form of collocation
Examples
- Students need to learn common collocations to sound more natural in English.
- The dictionary includes useful collocations for each entry word.
- Teachers often focus on verb-noun collocations like ‘take a shower’ and ‘do homework’.
- Learning collocations helps improve fluency in a foreign language.
- Some collocations are so fixed that changing one word sounds unnatural.
- The textbook has exercises on adjective-noun collocations such as ‘heavy rain’ and ‘light traffic’.