Collage

How to spell collage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce collage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does collage mean?

1. nounA picture or artwork made by sticking various materials, such as paper, fabric, and photographs, onto a backing surface.
2. verbTo create an image or design by combining and sticking together separate pieces of material.

Collage in a sentence

• noun

  She made a collage from old magazine cuttings and ticket stubs.

• verb

  The designer chose to collage scraps of wallpaper into a single panel.

• noun

  The children glued leaves and feathers onto card to create a collage.

• verb

  Students learned to collage torn paper into bold abstract shapes.

Where does collage come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes directly from the French collage, meaning literally 'a gluing' or 'a pasting', formed from the verb coller, 'to glue', which in turn rests on the noun colle, 'glue'. That French colle traces back to the ancient Greek kolla, also meaning 'glue', the same root that gives science the word collagen, the sticky protein that binds animal tissue together. English adopted collage in the early twentieth century, around 1915 to 1920, as artists such as Braque and Picasso began assembling pictures by pasting paper, fabric, and other scraps onto a surface. The spelling keeps its French shape entirely, which is why it ends in -age sounded as 'ahzh' rather than the English '-idge' of college; remembering that a collage is something glued together (colle) helps keep it apart from the place of study.

How the word is built

• coll- (from French colle: glue, ultimately Greek kolla)
• -age (noun suffix denoting a result or collection)