A collocation is made up of two or more words that are commonly used together in English. Think of collocations as words that usually go together. Strong collocations are word pairings that are expected to come together, such as combinations with ‘make’ and ‘do’: You make a cup of tea, but you do your homework.

“mischievous rumors and falsehoods” Antonyms: harmless, serious, sober, unplayful. Synonyms: prankish, arch, implike, wicked, impish, puckish, pixilated.

Antonyms: candor, fair dealing, frankness, guilelessness, honesty, openness, simplicity, sincerity, truth, veracity.

A familiar grouping of words which appears together because of their habitual use and thus creating the same meaning is called collocation. A group of words that are expected to be together can also be defined as collocations. Some more examples of collocations are to do homework, to make the bed, to take a risk, etc.

Below you can see seven main types of collocation in sample sentences.

• adverb + adjective. Invading that country was an utterly stupid thing to do.
• adjective + noun. The doctor ordered him to take regular exercise.
• noun + noun.
• noun + verb.
• verb + noun.
• verb + expression with preposition.
• verb + adverb.

Collocation refers to how words go together or form fixed relationships. Collocations may be strong or weak. Strong collocations are where the link between the two words is quite fixed and restricted. Weak collocations are where a word can collocate with many other words.

In the English language, collocation refers to a natural combination of words that are closely affiliated with each other….Compare:

A collocation is two words which we use together as a set phrase. For example we say a “tall building” rather than a “high building”. We use collocations all the time in English, so learning and using them will make you sound more natural.

quick adj. ADV. extremely, particularly, really, very a really quick worker | fairly, pretty, quite, reasonably, relatively | amazingly, remarkably, surprisingly | mercifully It was a mercifully quick end for those condemned to die. PREP.

Online OXFORD Collocation Dictionary major, terrible a major health scare | minor | bomb | food, health | Aids, BSE, etc. SCARE + NOUN story, tactics The government used scare tactics to get parents to have their children vaccinated against the disease.

Types of collocation with “lay” adverb + adjective: completely satisfied (NOT downright satisfied) adjective + noun: excruciating pain (NOT excruciating joy) noun + noun: a surge of anger (NOT a rush of anger) noun + verb: lions roar (NOT lions shout)

A fixed collocation is a phrase or construction. which is decompositional, and. whose constituents recurrently combine with each other.

Strong collocations are those with words that don’t match to many other words. The connection is quite strong because there are very few other acceptable options to say the same thing. For example, the expression “turn on a light” is a strong collocation.

Weak collocations Weak collocations are made up of words that collocate with a wide range of other words. For example, you can say you are in broad agreement with someone [generally in agreement with them]. These are weak collocations, in the sense that broad collocates with a broad range of diff erent nouns.