Vocabulary 06 - Two-Word Collocations
What is a collocation? Well, one of the meanings of COLLOCATION in the dictionary is ‘the arrangement, especially of words in a sentence’. A collocation is two or more words taken together to convey a certain meaning as if the two or more words were a single word. This essentially means that the words always go together and very rarely are changed.
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘lions shout’? Of course not! It is always ‘lions roar’. Somehow, ‘lions shout’ does not seem right and does not convey the same message that ‘lions roar’ does.
Think about other collocations, such as SAVE SPACE, GET DRUNK or DO NOTHING, and you will always associate the two words in each of the collocations almost as if they were one word. You will also not be comfortable replacing any of the words.
The essence of collocations is that the words have to be located side by side and in a particular order. Collocations can be formed by a variety of combinations using adjectives, verbs, nouns and adverbs. Prepositions can also be used along with other words to form more collocations.
'Utterly stupid', 'maiden voyage', 'strong coffee', 'miserable soul', 'good time', 'high horse' and 'vaguely remember' are just some of the collocations that you may be familiar with. Collocations are beautiful and powerful phrases that help us to communicate better and make our writing or speaking more vibrant and meaningful. In the quiz that follows you will learn about two-word collocations that will be a boon to your vocabulary.