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colloquy

UK /ˈkɒ.lə.kwi/noun, verb

colloquy is a noun meaning “A conversation or dialogue” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-O-L-L-O-Q-U-Y and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 12 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of colloquy is colloquies.

What does colloquy mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A conversation or dialogue.

  2. 2

    obsoleteA formal conference.

  3. 3

    A church court held by certain Reformed denominations.

  4. 4

    A written discourse.

  5. 5

    A discussion during a trial in which a judge ensures that the defendant understands what is taking place in the trial and what his or her rights are.

  6. 6

    A collection of scripted dialogues written as a textbook, or a set of exercises, to help students to practice and improve their Latin or Ancient Greek. See: Colloquy

verb

  1. 1

    rareTo converse.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce colloquy?

  • UK /ˈkɒ.lə.kwi/

Colloquy has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: Colloquy_pronunciation.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of colloquy

  • colloquies plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • colloquying participle, present
  • colloquied participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is colloquy?

Colloquy appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 105,204th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Colloquy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchcolloque, conversation (conversation, dialogue)
GermanGespräch, Kolloquium, Konversation (conversation, dialogue), Religionsgespräch (Christianity: church court held by certain…)
Portuguesecolóquio, conversa (conversation, dialogue)
Spanishcoloquio, conversación (conversation, dialogue)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does colloquy come from?

From Middle English colloquies pl, from Latin colloquium (“conversation”), from com- (“together, with”) (English com-) + form of loquor (“speak”) (from which English locution and other words).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).