Meaning & use
colloquial
Characteristic of informal, everyday conversation rather than formal writing or speech.
See it in a sentence
The professor asked students to avoid colloquial expressions in their research papers.
'Gonna' is a colloquial contraction of 'going to' common in casual speech.
A note on using this word
Not the same as 'slang'; colloquial language is simply informal and widely understood, while slang is often more restricted to certain groups.
Words with a similar meaning
informalconversational
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Words with an opposite meaning
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