🔗 English Collocations: 100 Essential Examples by Category

A collocation is a pair or group of words that habitually go together in natural English. Native speakers do not consciously choose them — they simply sound right. You make a decision, not do one. You drink strong coffee, not powerful coffee. You catch a cold, not get one (well, both work — but the first is more idiomatic). Collocations are the hidden architecture of fluency: once you learn them, your English shifts from grammatically correct to genuinely natural.

This guide presents 100 essential collocations organised into six practical categories, with usage notes and example sentences for each. By the end you will understand not just what the collocations are, but why they work the way they do.

What Makes a Collocation Different from Any Word Combination?

All collocations are word combinations, but not all word combinations are collocations. The key criterion is frequency of co-occurrence: a collocation is a pairing that occurs together far more often than chance would predict, and that native speakers treat as a single lexical unit. Corpus linguists measure this with statistics such as MI (Mutual Information) scores, but for learners the practical test is simpler: does replacing one word with a near-synonym produce something that sounds odd?

Consider do research versus make research. Both are grammatically possible. But make research sounds immediately foreign because do is the strongly preferred verb partner for research in English. That preference is a collocation. There is no logical rule behind it — it is a historical accident of usage, baked in through millions of repetitions. The only way to learn it is to encounter it and record it.

Category 1 — Verb + Noun: make, do, take, have, get

The five verbs make, do, take, have and get each govern a large set of noun collocations, and mixing them up is one of the most common sources of unnatural English. The guidelines below cover the central tendencies — they are not absolute rules, but they hold for the most frequent cases.

make

Use make with nouns that involve creating, producing, or causing something.

do

Use do with nouns that refer to tasks, activities, and general work — especially when the activity lacks a more specific verb.

take, have, and get

Take collocates with nouns suggesting action, responsibility, or opportunity: take a break, take a risk, take action, take part, take place, take charge, take effect, take offence, take turns, take responsibility. Note that in British English take a decision is common alongside make a decision.

Have collocates with nouns for experiences, states, and possession: have a conversation, have a meal, have a rest, have a look, have fun, have difficulty, have a row, have an operation, have a shower, have an impact.

Get collocates with nouns involving receiving, obtaining, or change of state: get permission, get the impression, get a shock, get the point, get a result, get a grip, get experience, get cold feet, get the sack, get in touch.

Category 2 — Adjective + Noun Collocations

Adjective-noun collocations are one of the trickiest areas for intermediate learners because the adjective choices are not predictable from meaning. Heavy and strong are near-synonyms, but they do not interchange freely: you say heavy rain but strong wind; heavy traffic but strong current. Similarly, hard and difficult both mean challenging, but hard work sounds natural while difficult work sounds slightly stiff, and hard decision and difficult decision are both fine but hard evidence has a completely different meaning from difficult evidence.

Category 3 — Adverb + Adjective Collocations

Adverbs intensify or qualify adjectives, but not every adverb pairs naturally with every adjective. Deeply collocates with emotional states: deeply disappointed, deeply moved, deeply concerned, deeply offended. Highly collocates with qualities that can be rated or evaluated: highly recommended, highly unlikely, highly qualified, highly effective, highly competitive. Completely pairs with adjectives that express totality: completely wrong, completely different, completely exhausted, completely unnecessary. Absolutely collocates with extreme or ungradable adjectives: absolutely certain, absolutely brilliant, absolutely terrible, absolutely packed. Using very with ungradable adjectives (e.g. very unique or very furious) is a common learner error that collocations awareness helps to correct.

Further useful adverb-adjective collocations: bitterly disappointed / cold, fully aware / booked / trained, perfectly clear / normal / acceptable, strictly confidential / speaking / forbidden, genuinely surprised / concerned / happy, badly injured / behaved / affected, fiercely competitive / independent / loyal.

Category 4 — Noun + Noun Collocations

English forms compound nouns and fixed noun phrases by pairing two nouns. These function as single semantic units and must be learnt as whole items. Some are written as one word, some hyphenated, and some remain two separate words — there is no reliable rule. The combinations below are all common in everyday and professional English.

• a wave of panic / enthusiasm / immigrants — A wave of panic swept through the crowd.
• a burst of laughter / energy / speed — There was a sudden burst of laughter from the back of the room.
• a piece of advice / information / evidence / furniture — Let me give you a piece of advice: always proofread your emails.
• a matter of fact / time / opinion / urgency — Getting a visa is simply a matter of time and paperwork.
• a sense of humour / direction / achievement / urgency — She has a wonderful sense of humour.
• a lack of confidence / funding / experience / communication — A lack of communication caused the project to fail.
• a state of emergency / confusion / disrepair / mind — The building was in a terrible state of disrepair.
• a sign of weakness / progress / the times / relief — Admitting you were wrong is not a sign of weakness.

Category 5 — Verb + Adverb Collocations

Just as certain adjectives prefer certain adverbs, certain verbs have preferred adverb partners. Using a different adverb is often grammatically fine but stylistically awkward.

Category 6 — Fixed Collocations with Common Nouns

Many high-frequency nouns have a cluster of strongly preferred verb partners. Learning a noun's full collocation family — the verbs that go with it — is one of the most efficient vocabulary strategies available. Here are five important nouns with their core collocations.

decision

make a decision (most common), take a decision (British English, formal), reach a decision (after deliberation), come to a decision (informal), reverse a decision, postpone a decision, stick to a decision.

attention

pay attention, attract attention, draw attention to, catch someone's attention, hold someone's attention, divert attention from, devote attention to.

time

spend time, waste time, save time, take time, run out of time, have time, kill time, find time, lose track of time.

responsibility

take responsibility for, accept responsibility, bear responsibility, shift responsibility, shoulder responsibility, avoid / evade responsibility, delegate responsibility.

problem

solve a problem, tackle a problem, face a problem, address a problem, cause a problem, overcome a problem, identify a problem, create a problem, raise a problem.

How to Learn Collocations Effectively

The single most important habit is to record words in context, not in isolation. When you encounter the word decision in a text, do not write it down alone. Write the full phrase: make a decision, or better still, the whole sentence. A vocabulary notebook organised by keyword — with a page for decision listing every collocating verb you find — creates a rich, personalised reference.

A collocation dictionary is an invaluable tool. The Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English lists the most frequent partners for over 9,000 headwords, organised by part of speech. For any word you are unsure about, checking its collocates takes thirty seconds and prevents fossilising an error.

Extensive reading builds collocation knowledge passively over time, but only if you notice and record new patterns as you encounter them. Reading without attention is largely passive exposure — useful, but slower than targeted study. Combine reading with noticing: when a phrase strikes you as vivid or specific, ask yourself whether it is a collocation, then look it up.

Gap-fill and cloze exercises are the most effective active practice format for collocations. Being forced to supply the missing verb or adjective engages retrieval, which builds durable memory. LexFizz's Cloze Dropdown and Flash Cards exercises let you practise collocations in sentence context, which is far more effective than isolated pairing drills.