collaborate
Americanverb (used without object)
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collaborates,
present (3rd person singular)
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collaborated,
past participle, past
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collaborating
present participle
verb
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to work with another or others on a joint project
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to cooperate as a traitor, esp with an enemy occupying one's own country
Usage
What does collaborate mean? Collaborate means to work together, especially on a goal or shared project. Collaborate is often used in a positive context to refer to two or more parties successfully working together on professional or artistic projects. It often implies more than just cooperation. When two or more people collaborate, they often share and develop each other’s ideas. The act of collaborating is called collaboration. Such a joint effort can be described with the adjective collaborative. People who collaborate are called collaborators. Collaborate can also be used in a much more specific way meaning to cooperate as a traitor with enemy forces in one’s own country. This is much less commonly used than its general sense. Example: The two musicians, who usually have very different styles, collaborated on the groundbreaking new album.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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collaboratesimple
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collaboratessimple
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have collaboratedperfect
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has collaboratedperfect
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am collaboratingprogressive
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are collaboratingprogressive
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is collaboratingprogressive
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have been collaboratingperfect progressive
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has been collaboratingperfect progressive
Past
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collaboratedsimple
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had collaboratedperfect
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was collaboratingprogressive
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were collaboratingprogressive
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had been collaboratingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of collaborate
First recorded in 1870–75; from Late Latin collabōrātus (past participle of collabōrāre), equivalent to col- col- 1 + labor “work” + -ātus -ate 1
Compare meaning
How does collaborate compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
When you work together on shared goal, you collaborate. If you don't just split a project up evenly but work together on creating solutions, you collaborate. Inside the word you see co-labor, or "working together." Cooperation is simply splitting up the work and getting it done. Collaboration is when you brainstorm, create, and share possible solutions. During World War II, however, Nazi collaborators were sharing ideas with the wrong side. In today's pop music scene, collaboration means featuring a guest star on a record, and it's often a surefire way to boost sales.
Vocabulary lists containing collaborate
100 Top "SAT" Words
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The Diary of Anne Frank
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Essential English Vocabulary, List 1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Coates, who had served on Nato missions, noted that Canada and the US collaborate on many aspects of military defence.
From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2026
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he had spoken with his UAE counterpart Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and agreed "to collaborate against extremist elements seeking to harm security and undermine stability".
From Barron's ● Oct. 1, 2026
That plan didn’t pan out, schedule-wise, but the filmmaker and the artist finally found a way to collaborate.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026
Guilfoyle posed with Exarchou and others as the new joint venture signed agreements to collaborate with Romania and Ukraine’s Naftogaz, among others.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
“What better way to compete than within the same tent? And you cannot rightfully call it a collaboration. How can I collaborate with someone whose identity I don’t even know?”
From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern
Renée Ballard, who collaborates with Stilwell on that cold case, has starred or co-starred in several novels of her own.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
It collaborates with landowners to protect and improve habitats.
From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2026
Project Glasswing collaborates with cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks to adapt Mythos for defense.
From Barron's ● Apr. 10, 2026
It is also a founding member of the VPN Trust Initiative and collaborates with cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt to refine breach response protocols and educate users on data safety.
From Salon ● Mar. 27, 2026
Robertson is a craftsman, brought up in the theatre, amenable to outside influences; he collaborates with his actors, with the public,—one may say, with his entire generation.
From The English Stage Being an Account of the Victorian Drama by Augustin Filon
North Carolina Democrats collaborated with Voters of Tomorrow, an entirely Gen Z-led organization seeking to promote political engagement among that demographic, for its national summit in August.
From Salon ● Oct. 2, 2026
The scientists collaborated with the conservation charity the Mount Elgon Foundation, external.
From BBC ● Sep. 24, 2026
To solve this problem, Chen's group collaborated with How's team to develop a two-step AI-driven control system.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 22, 2026
After making Venice her primary residence, Caland collaborated with architect Neil Kaufman on the design for her enclosed château.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026
“Vern wasn’t planning to be on the boat. I think they collaborated on the idea, but your mom was gonna execute it.”
From "The Line Tender" by Kate Allen
OpenAI global policy chief Chris Lehane said on Tuesday that the company had been collaborating on AI safety issues with Anthropic and Google DeepMind for several weeks.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 19, 2026
The two began collaborating to better understand New Guinea's poorly studied snakes, and they have continued working together on the group ever since.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 18, 2026
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was at that speech in Strasbourg, has talked repeatedly about collaborating with the EU on AI safety.
From Barron's ● Sep. 16, 2026
Now, thanks to some startling revelations about AI agents collaborating deceptively to outwit their human overlords, doomers are ascendant.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
He took a personal interest in her, because some of his friends were collaborating in experiments to measure her diameter by Michelson’s interferometer.
From "Cheaper by the Dozen" by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
