Meaning & use
collaborative
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Meanings
adjectivebefore a noun
Involving two or more people, teams, or organizations working together toward the same result.
Grammar: It usually comes before a noun: a collaborative project, not *a project collaborative* except after a linking verb.
Patterns
- collaborative effort
- collaborative project
- collaborative approach
- collaborative learning
The research was a collaborative effort across three universities.
Teachers use collaborative learning so students solve problems in pairs.
adjectivebefore a nouncomputing
Designed for several users to work on the same document, file, or task at the same time or in a shared space.
Grammar: Common with tools and software; the cooperation is built into the system.
Patterns
- collaborative document
- collaborative software
- collaborative workspace
We edited the proposal in a collaborative document.
The team chose a collaborative workspace with shared boards.
Common combinations
- collaborative effort
- The mural was a collaborative effort by local artists.
- collaborative project
- The two firms began a collaborative project on clean water.
- collaborative approach
- A collaborative approach reduced arguments during planning.
- collaborative tools
- The class used collaborative tools to comment on drafts.
Synonyms and how they differ
- cooperative
- Cooperative can describe a willing attitude; collaborative more strongly describes shared work toward one outcome.
- joint
- Joint simply means shared by parties, often in joint statement or joint account, without implying deep teamwork.
- collective
- Collective emphasizes the group as a whole and can downplay individual roles.
Opposites
Word family
- collaborate verb
- To work together with someone, sometimes in art or science.
- collaboration noun
- The act or result of working together.
- collaboratively adverb
- In a way that involves shared work.
- collaborator noun
- A person who works with others; in history it can have a negative political sense.
Commonly confused: collaborative or collective?
collaborative vs collective
Collective points to a group acting as one; collaborative points to people cooperating inside a shared task.
Practice
Choose the best completion: The scientists published the paper as a ___ achievement.
Choose one answer.
Before the noun achievement you need the adjective collaborative. Collaboratively is an adverb, collaborate is a verb, and collaboration is a noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “collaborative”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.