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adjective

colloquial

CEFR C2

characteristic of informal spoken language or conversation

In a sentence

Six example sentences with colloquial, each labelled with its topic.

  • Twain filled the raft scenes with colloquial talk, so the boys sound like neighbors rather than narrators.

    Literature

  • Phrasebooks teach polite forms, but a week in the market taught me the colloquial greeting everyone actually uses.

    Travel

  • The judge asked the witness to translate a colloquial phrase from the recording into plain courtroom terms.

    Law

  • The songwriter keeps every lyric colloquial, so a verse sounds like something said across a kitchen table.

    Music

  • The bank rewrote its letters in colloquial English after customers said the old ones read like a court summons.

    Business

  • The assistant handles a colloquial question like 'what's the deal with my bill' better than the stiff wording of the manual.

    Technology

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Found in these word lists

Found in 6 published word lists

Each source is a published word list that contains colloquial. No exam board publishes an official GRE, GMAT or SAT list; GMAT words come from GRE lists and the Academic Word List.