SYNONYMS AND RELATED EXPRESSIONS
colloquial
adjective
Characteristic of ordinary informal conversation.
Local English device voice, when available. This is not a recorded dictionary pronunciation.
Used in informal conversation
Closest synonyms
Related words and expressions
These extend or explain the idea and may require a different sentence structure.
Usage distinction
Return to topIdiomatic means natural to a language and need not be informal; colloquial is not necessarily slang.
CHECK THE MEANING IN CONTEXT
See colloquial in use
The editor replaced a colloquial phrase in the formal application.
For the next reading, Leon prepared a short introduction to elucidate the relationship between two narrators. He used the colloquial phrase 'keep an eye on the dates' because the event was informal.
Compare an alternative with the original word in each passage. Shared meanings do not make every pair interchangeable.
Synonym reference scope and sources
The groups distinguish the senses selected for this study entry. Closest synonyms and broader related expressions have separate labels. The listed sources support lexical selection; not every phrase is a direct quotation from a source.
How the synonym reference was prepared / WordNet 3.0 license