What is a collocation?

A collocation is a grouping of two or more words that often occur together. To fluent English speakers, who use these variations all the time, they only sound "right." Other variations, on the other hand, can sound unnatural and "false."

A collocation is a group of words or phrases that appear together more often than can be anticipated by chance.

With so many words for so many different things in the English language, it can feel like you're not getting anywhere fast when you try to comprehend anything. But don't worry; collocations are easy enough to grasp, and they'll come in handy once you start using them. Since collocations are so prevalent in English speech and writing, understanding their usage is critical to being able to speak and write in a manner that is both well understood and grammatically right.

Understanding the words go together the most often in English is a great way to demonstrate your command of the language by demonstrating that you are mindful of the words that go together the best, so they are used in that way more often than not. However, there are many forms of collocations, so we'll look at a few explanations to help explain what a collocation is.