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  

/ kɒ-, kɔlaʒ, kəˈlɑːʒ /

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

Etymology

Origin of collage

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

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 groundbreaking photographer and multimedia artist created a metallic blue photo collage celebrating jazz.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026

In the 1980s Hockney invented a kind of photo collage he dubbed "joiners" that used slightly different images to produce a patchwork akin to the cubist painting of his hero Pablo Picasso.

From Barron's ● Jun. 12, 2026

These connections made anime and martial arts cinema’s incorporation into hip-hop, an art form built on collaboration and sonic collage, somewhat inevitable.

From Salon ● May 31, 2026

Mauigoa grew up in American Samoa and the 20-year-old paid homage to his homeland with a collage on the back of his suit jacket.

From BBC ● Apr. 23, 2026

I closed my fingers around it, then walked on my knees over to Rosaleen’s bed and placed it alongside the pocket mirror and the brush, moving them around like I was working on a collage.

From "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd

Ever since he began snapping Polaroids in the 1960s, Hockney maintained an intense relationship with photography, taking thousands of pictures and using some in collages and other works.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

It’s like making a collage from magazine clippings—the only difference is that the collages are digital and easily shared with anyone, even strangers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 20, 2026

Why not make big printouts of the digital collages and call it a day?

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 16, 2026

In his later years he became bed bound and focused on creating cut paper collages.

From BBC ● Nov. 28, 2025

Ana's collages had been shown by famous galleries in San Francisco and New York and Mexico City for years, but in the last few months she'd sold work to three different museums.

From "We Are Okay" by Nina LaCour

Yet a gilded opera theater still seems an unlikely home for Holzinger, 38, whose anarchic works are collaged from new and old text and music, often with sharply contrasting styles.

From New York Times ● May 28, 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

Martin’s colorful mural, “Hey Young World,” combines photorealistic imagery and graffiti text collaged together.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2023

I continue to turn the pages of my mother's beauty book, devouring everything: ink drawings, rouge-stick color smudges, flower petals, and collaged petit-paintings; beauty pamphlets, spintria prices, diagrams of women's bodies.

From "The Belles" by Dhonielle Clayton

Questions of what people own, and control are increasingly supplanted by questions of who or what people are, replacing clashes of classes with the collaging of identities and morals.

From Salon ● Sep. 12, 2024

Angie Franklin, 39, enjoyed regularly collaging as a kid, and a sporadic visit to the collage class with a friend was a pleasant surprise.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 5, 2023

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

You’re not collaging together your creativity on the road with little fragments — I’ve been able to work with a greater sense of singularity.

From New York Times ● May 17, 2022

Mr Wightman said he begins each piece by imagining and painting a "cartoon" of a scene before collaging the surface with hundreds of pieces of wallpaper.

From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2022