collide

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin collīdō (“to strike or clash together; to batter, crush”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from com- (“together, with”), assimilated as col-, and laedō (“to strike, injure”),^[3][4][7][2] a verb of unknown origin.^[3][4] The diphthong of the simple verb becomes a long i in the compound.^[8][3] The OED compares Middle French collider, found once in 1529, and notes that collision is older in English.^[2] Other English words from the same Latin verb are lesion and elide.^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

To bring something into violent contact with something else; to dash together: 1621, in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.^[2][4][9]

Semantic evolution

The first sense was transitive; the intransitive "to come into violent contact, to crash into" followed by 1646, in Sir Walter Raleigh,^[2] although the Shorter Oxford dates it to the early 18th century.^[10] Johnson (1755) knew only the transitive verb, "to strike against each other", quoting Sir Thomas Browne on bodies collided.^[11] The transitive use is now rare or archaic except in technical language.^[10][9] The figurative "to come into conflict, to clash" dates from 1787,^[2] and a sense "to bring together, combine" lasted from 1661 to 1877.^[2] Physicists used it of particles and molecules striking one another from 1768, and particle physics made it transitive again in the late 1960s, of particles made to collide in a collider.^[2]

Timeline

• 1621 – transitive, to bring into violent contact.^[2][4][9]
• before 1646 – intransitive, to come into violent contact, to crash.^[2]
• 1661 – to bring together, combine (obsolete by 1877).^[2]
• 1768 – in physics, of particles, to strike together.^[2]
• 1787 – to come into conflict, to clash.^[2]
• 1840 – transitive, to bring into conflict.^[2]
• 1968–69 – transitive, to make particles collide in a collider.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To strike or crash into something or each other with force, especially while moving: A cyclist collided with a parked van.^[12][9][2]
2. To come into conflict; to clash or disagree: Their plans for the business collided from the start.^[12][2][10]
3. In physics, of particles or molecules, to strike one another; also, to make particles do so in a collider.^[2]
4. (archaic) To strike against, or to bring things into violent contact.^[9][10]

Word family

• collider

Related words

• collision
• allision
• elide
• elision
• lesion

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins