Word of the Day Archive
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.
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
Colloquial is from the Latin colloquium, a conversation, from col- (com-), with, together + loquor, loqui, to speak.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for colloquial
