Collar

How to spell collar

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce collar

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does collar mean?

1. nounThe part of a garment that fastens around or frames the neck, or a band worn around an animal's neck.
2. verbTo seize or detain someone, especially to stop them and demand attention.

Collar in a sentence

• noun

  He ironed the shirt collar until it was perfectly crisp.

• verb

  The officer managed to collar the suspect before he reached the exit.

• noun

  The dog's collar held a small tag with its name and address.

• verb

  She tried to collar the manager about the billing error before he left.

Where does collar come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin collare, meaning a band or chain for the neck, which was built directly on collum, the Latin word for 'neck'. English took it in during the 1200s through Old French, where it appeared as coler, and it first named the part of a garment that encircles the neck. Over the centuries the sense widened to cover any neck-encircling band, including those put on dogs, horses, and prisoners, and from the idea of seizing someone by the neck the informal verb 'to collar', meaning to catch or detain, developed. The spelling trap lives in that unstressed second syllable, which sounds like a vague schwa but is written -ar rather than the expected -er or -or. Knowing the Latin collum sits at the root can help, since it anchors the double l and reminds you the word is fundamentally about the neck.

How the word is built

• coll- (from Latin collum: neck)
• -ar (suffix forming a noun naming a thing for that part)