colluding

[ kuh-loo-ding ]

adjective

1. working together secretively with fraudulent or harmful intent:

   If the colluding witnesses have not agreed on the details being asked about, each witness will invent something.

   By acting like a monopoly, the colluding firms can set a monopoly price and generate monopoly profits.

noun

1. the act or process of working together secretively with fraudulent or harmful intent:

   Both agencies took pains to be subtle and not make the colluding too obvious.

Word History and Origins

Origin of colluding¹

First recorded in 1605–15; collud(e) ( def ) + -ing ¹( def ) for the noun; collud(e) ( def ) + -ing ²( def ) for the adjective

Example Sentences

Lai, the owner of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, was arrested last August and accused of colluding with foreign forces under China’s national security law.

From Quartz

That’s a problem because algorithms don’t need to communicate to collude, and as a result there are few legal mechanisms to prosecute this kind of collusion.

From Singularity Hub 

Question them, and you are colluding in exacerbating the awful effects of their trauma.

From The Daily Beast

Whitehouse noted that Inhofe charged that government agencies had been “colluding” to peddle climate-change threats.

From The Daily Beast

“The city and corporations are colluding to change the city in a very deliberate way,” he says.

From The Daily Beast

By restricting aid to only registered groups, the State Department is colluding with repressive regimes, fear democracy advocates.

From The Daily Beast

He accuses Tehran of secretly colluding with Washington in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

From The Daily Beast

If they let things take their course, they will be represented as colluding with sedition, or at least tacitly encouraging it.

From Project Gutenberg

It would be to lose all chance of re-election for the official to cheat the public by colluding with the liquor sellers.

From Project Gutenberg

It was communism all over: a superpower buying influence and colluding with corrupt elites to rob their own nations blind.

From Project Gutenberg

Collud′er; Collū′sion, act of colluding: a secret agreement to deceive: deceit.

From Project Gutenberg