Collaborative

How to spell collaborative

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce collaborative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does collaborative mean?

1. adjectiveInvolving two or more people or groups working together towards a shared goal.

Collaborative in a sentence

• The report praised the collaborative effort between the two departments.

• A collaborative approach helped the team finish the project ahead of schedule.

Where does collaborative come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb collaborare, which combined com-, meaning 'together', with laborare, meaning 'to work', built in turn on the noun labor, meaning 'toil' or 'labour'. So at its literal heart it simply means 'working together'. The Latin form gave English the verb 'collaborate' in the nineteenth century, and 'collaborative' followed as the adjective describing work or effort done jointly. The same labor root sits inside everyday words such as 'labour', 'laboratory', and 'elaborate', all of which carry the idea of effort or working at something. The spelling trap lives at the front: the doubled L of col- (from com- assimilating before the L of labor) is easy to drop, and the unstressed vowels in the middle blur into schwa sounds that give no clue how the word is written.

How the word is built

• col- (together, from com-)
• labor (work)
• -ative (adjective suffix)