How to Use colloquial in a Sentence

colloquial

adjective

• Yet, most of us think of road rage as the colloquial term for any type of angry driving.
  — Elizabeth Bernstein, WSJ, 30 Mar. 2022
• But baseball teams can be built with paper, in the colloquial sense.
  — Matt Kawahara, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 Aug. 2022
• The first is in a colloquial sense focused on ethics and morality.
  — Chris Cillizza, CNN, 27 Apr. 2018
• At its colloquial heart, the debate is about whether poppadoms are food or snack.
  — Ali Watkins, New York Times, 24 Jan. 2024
• The Stanford team monitored a group of parrotlets, which is the colloquial term for a group of very small parrot species.
  — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 25 Nov. 2019
• The red color was caused by smoke particles — and is not to be confused with a blood moon, the colloquial term for the reddish tinge of a lunar eclipse.
  — Nora Mishanec, SFChronicle.com, 1 Oct. 2020
• There are a few moments in the book, though, when Kendi uses the word in a more colloquial, less rigorous sense.
  — Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker, 12 Aug. 2019
• It’s like a colloquial symbol that can mean so many things, and in this movie it’s almost never used in the regular way.
  — Chloe Schama, Vogue, 24 Sep. 2020
• Anyone who has ever worked in a cannery knows that 'mug up' is a colloquial term for coffee break.
  — Laine Welch, Anchorage Daily News, 29 Apr. 2018
• Many of us are accustomed to the common names of the moon and its cycles, but there are also a multitude of colloquial names.
  — Caralin Nunes, The Arizona Republic, 18 Jan. 2024
• The random walk is a colloquial term for a way to create a path based on random decisions at junctions.
  — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 30 Mar. 2020
• David has also, in a more colloquial sense, played himself.
  — M.d. Rodrigues, New York Times, 7 Feb. 2024
• Since then, Bajans (a colloquial name for the people of Barbados) have been joined by folks all over the world to take part in this centuries-old tradition.
  — Jihan Forbes, Allure, 8 Aug. 2022
• The Ukrainian defensive line runs the length of the de facto border of the Donbas, the colloquial name for the Donets Basin, a mining and industrial region.
  — Nils Adler, Los Angeles Times, 21 Jan. 2022
• The phrase The Firm is a colloquial (albeit cynical) term used to describe the royal family.
  — Paulina Jayne Isaac, Glamour, 4 Mar. 2021
• That’s a colloquial name for beech blight aphids, a native insect that feeds in aggregations on beech.
  — Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 1 Sep. 2022
• His books were filled with lengthy quotes from primary sources as well as colloquial asides and comparisons to modern life.
  — Harrison Smith, Washington Post, 31 Oct. 2022
• Catracha is the colloquial word for woman in the founders’ hometown of Santa Elena, Honduras.
  — Shayna Harris, Forbes, 16 Sep. 2021
• There is even a name for them: zama zamas, a Zulu colloquial term meaning to persevere, to keep at it.
  — Los Angeles Times, 9 Aug. 2022
• At times, lines that are meant to be conversational or colloquial feel rote or cliched.
  — Carole V. Bell, Washington Post, 7 Feb. 2023
• Each voice is colloquial and discretionary, engaging in some of the same subjects and variables, but the access and vantage points are key.
  — Michael W. Twitty, Bon Appétit, 13 May 2021
• That link has given the illness its more colloquial name: Broken-heart syndrome.
  — Karin Brulliard, chicagotribune.com, 19 Oct. 2017
• Some users have begun to call ivermectin more colloquial names, like Moo Juice, because many have been ingesting the gel version.
  — NBC News, 26 Aug. 2021
• To put in the capital — in colloquial terms, America is not a deadbeat nation.
  — Jim Tankersley, New York Times, 2 May 2023
• The speech, a mix of Mr. Obama’s often lofty rhetoric and punchy, colloquial language, drew more scattered applause than in earlier years.
  — Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear, New York Times, 12 Jan. 2016
• As India braces for the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, some Indians have come up with a jugaad—the colloquial term for a hack—that might prove to be a menace for the country.
  — Niharika Sharma, Quartz, 8 Apr. 2021
• Sadly, though, the colloquial moniker—once used jokingly—is starting to ring a little too true lately.
  — Scott Christian, Esquire, 15 Aug. 2017
• The judges discussed, ruling that the word was usable because of its colloquial usage, the paper reported.
  — Leah Asmelash, CNN, 10 July 2021
• The number 420 itself has also come to be associated with marijuana and smoking and is often used as a colloquial term for the flower and the act of consuming it.
  — Mary Walrath-Holdridge, USA TODAY, 20 Apr. 2024
• Some have even dared to use the most colloquial register, which is exceptionally offensive when speaking about royalty.
  — Tamara Loos, Foreign Affairs, 7 Dec. 2020

Last Updated: 2 Nov 2024