collude

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin collūdō (“to play with; to act collusively”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} formed from com- (“with, together”) and lūdō (“to play”),^[2][4][5] from lūdus (“a game”).^[4] Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary take the verb back to Proto-Indo-European *leid- (“to play”).^[3][5] Dictionary.com allows for a passage through Middle French.^[7] Collusion is formed from the same verb and came into English first, in the late 14th century.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

To act in secret concert with someone: 1525, in the Aberdeen register, as cited in Jamieson's Dictionary.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also gives 1525, Etymonline the 1520s and Dictionary.com 1515–25.^[4][3][7]

Semantic evolution

Collins explains the sense as a development from "to play together" to "to conspire together";^[8] the Latin verb already meant to act collusively.^[2] Etymonline quotes Fowler that the notion of fraud is essential to collusion.^[3] Johnson (1755) gave "to conspire in a fraud; to act in concert; to play into the hand of each other".^[9] Two short-lived transitive uses are recorded: to elude by trickery (1642–79) and to bring about by collusion (from before 1797, in Horace Walpole, to 1834).^[2][10] The American Heritage Dictionary now extends the sense to any illegal or improper purpose.^[5]

Timeline

• 1525 – to act in secret concert, to conspire.^[2][4]
• 1642 – to elude by trickery (until 1679).^[2][10]
• before 1797 – to stir up or bring about by collusion (until 1834).^[2][10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To act together in secret for a fraudulent or improper purpose; to conspire or connive: The guards were accused of colluding with the smugglers.^[8][5][4][2]
2. (obsolete, before 1797–1834) To stir up or bring about by collusion.^[2][11]

Word family

• colluder

Related words

• collusion
• collusive
• allude
• delude
• elude
• illude
• ludicrous

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
11. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press