collide

verb

Simple meaning

Crash together with violent impact.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

kuhlyd

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US device voice

IPA pronunciation (US)

kəˈlaɪd

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

verb

Crash together with violent impact
intransitive
To impact directly, especially if violent.
Be incompatible; be or come into conflict
Cause to collide

Word at a Glance

Difficulty: C1 · Advanced (estimated)
Frequency: Uncommon
Typical Use: Primarily written

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Crash together with violent impact

Used this way, collide is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It comes across as direct, sometimes bluntly so.

Emotional tone: Negative
Formality: Neutral
Intensity: Moderate
How common: Moderately common
Connotation: Serious and weighty
Usage feel: Blunt and forceful

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

collide headelectrons collideatoms collide

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

collidernounInflected form
An accelerator in which two beams of particles are forced to collide head on.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

collide withverbCompound term
Hit against.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

superconducting supercollidernounRelated term
A collider that operates at very low temperatures.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.