Collocate
verbIdea
A linguistics student notices that native speakers always say “strong coffee” but never “powerful coffee”. They also say “heavy rain” but not “strong rain”. These word pairs just sound right together. What is the student doing? He is learning how words collocate.
Comparison
Collocate means to occur regularly together in a language (e.g., “make a decision”, not “do a decision”). Unlike coordinate (which means to organise things to work together), collocate is about the natural, conventional pairing of words. It is a linguistic term, not a general action.
Examples in use
The adjective “heavy” collocates with “rain” and “smoker”, but not with “sunshine”.
In English, “commit a crime” is a common collocation; “do a crime” does not collocate.
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