collage

American  

[kuh-lahzh, koh-] / kəˈlɑʒ, koʊ- /

noun

• collages
  plural

1. a technique of composing a work of art by pasting on a single surface various materials not normally associated with one another, as newspaper clippings, parts of photographs, theater tickets, and fragments of an envelope.

2. a work of art produced by this technique.

3. an assemblage or occurrence of diverse elements or fragments in unlikely or unexpected juxtaposition.

   The experimental play is a collage of sudden scene shifts, long monologues, musical interludes, and slapstick.

4. a film that presents a series of seemingly unrelated scenes or images or shifts from one scene or image to another suddenly and without transition.

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verb (used with object)

collaged, collaging

1. to make a collage of.

   The artist has collaged old photos, cartoon figures, and telephone numbers into a unique work of art.

collage British  

/ kəˈlɑːʒ, kɔlaʒ, kɒ- /

noun

1. an art form in which compositions are made out of pieces of paper, cloth, photographs, and other miscellaneous objects, juxtaposed and pasted on a dry ground

2. a composition made in this way

3. any work, such as a piece of music, created by combining unrelated styles

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• collagist
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• collages
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of collage

1915–20; < French, equivalent to colle paste, glue (< Greek kólla ) + -age -age

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Explanation

Have you ever cut out a bunch of pictures from magazines and pasted them together to make a big picture? If you have, you have made a collage. Collage came to English through French from the Greek word for glue, kolla, about 100 years ago. A collage is not only made from magazine pictures. In the world of fine art, it refers to a work made with various small objects sometimes with paint sometimes without. The word can also be used to mean a collection of different things. If it's very loud in your house, you might come home to a collage of sounds from the dog, the TV, your mom on the phone and your brother on the guitar. Years after you graduate, high school might just seem like a collage of memories.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

collage collages collaged collaging

The group’s epochal 2000 debut, “Since I Left You,” was immediately hailed as a masterpiece of collage; it then took 16 years to make the follow-up, “Wildflower,” which featured guest vocalists for the first time.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 20, 2026

It's being created in real time - as soon as the portraits are taken they appear on the wall, in a collage - something Endless says can be a creative risk.

From BBC ● Oct. 20, 2026

She was previously an associate graphic designer at Business Insider, where she received an American Illustration award in 2022 for her collage work on an investigative feature.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026

The digital collage gives way to a more familiar cooking-show fantasy.

From Salon ● Aug. 5, 2026

Mr. Carlon told us to work on a collage today.

From "P.S. I Miss You" by Jen Petro-Roy

So are three mural-sized collages that reflect his ongoing investigations into the legacies of colonialism.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 20, 2026

Krasner’s muscular collages incorporating charcoal drawings made at Hofmann’s school provide a vigorous finale, with the small elements in the abstracted figures enriching the scale.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026

Through the 1970s and early 80s, her work depicted uncharacteristically dark series' of collages in which she embraced the imagery of natural life cycles.

From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026

Using AI to generate images, Mr. Park collages these pictures together, then runs the result through CRT TVs, replicating the flickering, eerie results in photorealistic canvases.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026

He likes to cut out the cartoons and make collages.

From "If I Stay" by Gayle Forman

A collaged print by Liu Shiyuan presents a dizzying array of images—fruit, bees, jellyfish, shrouded figures, fabric samples—that is more disorienting than anything else.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

A collaged flier for the meeting showed a skeleton hand clutching a butterfly above a succinct description written in gothic font: “A group discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or themes.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2024

But GenAI can do more than create collaged images and help write emails -- it can also design new drugs to treat disease.

From Science Daily ● Feb. 7, 2024

At the diagonally opposite corner of the country, romantic notions of woodland collaged with vibrant crimson on crisp-autumn mornings are unlike almost anywhere else on earth.

From Salon ● Jun. 18, 2023

Their floors were always collaged with stray bits of paper, and trapped flies waved for help from the gummy killing fields of their tabletops.

From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris

“East of the River” traces the page’s origins, collaging screenshots of the young account when it had just 61 posts and 900 followers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026

His collaging instincts are still present, but here his visions are laced with a mystery that draws us in.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026

Certainly, if you're at home collaging a vision board for fun with your friends, that sounds like a blast.

From Salon ● Apr. 9, 2024

In the 1990s, she developed a collaging technique whereby she paints on a transparent sheet of plastic that she then sticks to the canvas and peels off, imprinting the design on canvas.

From New York Times ● Sep. 16, 2022

Javadi incorporates similar techniques, collaging swaths of colorfully patterned fabric with black-and-white archival images of elegantly dressed, bareheaded women.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 24, 2022

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