Word of the Day

Wednesday, August 18, 1999

colloquial

\kuh-LOH-kwee-uhl\ , adjective;

Characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation; "wrote her letters in a colloquial style"; "the broken syntax and casual enunciation of colloquial English"; hence, unstudied; informal; as, colloquial phrases; a colloquial style.

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Quotes:

To use a colloquial phrase, such sentiments...do one's heart good.

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

The abandonment of...poetic diction for the colloquial language of real life.

-- John Richard Green,

His [Samuel Johnson's] colloquial talents were, indeed, of the highest order.

-- Macaulay,

Origin:

Colloquial is from the Latin colloquium, a conversation, from col- (com-), with, together + loquor, loqui, to speak.