Collision

How to spell collision

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce collision

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does collision mean?

1. nounAn instance of two or more moving things striking violently together.
2. nounA conflict between opposing interests, opinions, or forces.

Collision in a sentence

• The two cars met in a head-on collision at the junction.

• The merger talks ended in a collision of competing business interests.

• The airline reported a near collision between two planes on the runway.

• The policy created a collision between cost savings and worker safety.

Where does collision come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Collision comes from the Latin collisionem, the noun form of collidere, which meant 'to strike or dash together'. That verb was built from the prefix com-, meaning 'together', joined to laedere, meaning 'to strike, hurt, or damage'; the prefix shifted to col- before the letter l, which is why the modern word carries a doubled l. English took it in during the early 1400s, at first for the violent clashing of physical objects, and the figurative sense of a clash between interests or opinions followed soon after. The same laedere root that lies hidden here also gives us 'lesion', a word for a damaging injury to body tissue. The doubled l and the single s are the spelling trap: the s sounds like a soft 'zh', so writers sometimes reach for a c or a z instead.

How the word is built

• col- (from com-: together)
• lis (from laedere: to strike, dash)
• -ion (noun suffix)