colleague
Americannoun
noun
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Usage
What does colleague mean? A colleague is someone you work with or someone who’s in the same profession as you, especially a peer within that profession.Colleague can be a synonym for coworker, which is someone who has the same employer as you. But it also used to refer to people who have different employers but who work in the same or a very similar profession, especially when they regularly interact or share knowledge. For example, two medical researchers who work for different universities but who collaborate to publish research findings would be called colleagues.Example: Sarah has received an outpouring of support from her fellow attorneys at the firm as well as many of her colleagues in the legal community.
Other Word Forms
- colleagueship noun
Etymology
Origin of colleague
First recorded in 1515–25; from Middle French collegue, from Latin collēga, equivalent to col- “with, together” ( col- 1 ) + -lēga, derivative of legere “to choose, gather”
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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.
In a study published earlier this year, Dudley and colleagues at Berkeley analyzed feathers from 17 bird species and found alcohol metabolites in 10 of them.
From Science Daily
He found it difficult to breathe after standing close to where it had been sprayed, and he and the 15-20 colleagues who tested it with him could not easily wash it off.
From BBC
Scientists have long proposed, including Sur's colleague Earl K. Miller at MIT, that the prefrontal cortex can guide the activity of more posterior areas of the brain.
From Science Daily
They were at his side, along with many former colleagues, as he was moved to tears when he addressed West Ham's fans after the re-naming of the stand.
From BBC
De Graaff and her colleagues tested a wide range of galaxy and active galactic nucleus models against the object's spectrum, attempting to reproduce its features.
From Science Daily
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.
