colloquium

American  

[kuh-loh-kwee-uhm] / kəˈloʊ kwi əm /

noun

colloquiums, plural colloquia plural

1. a conference at which scholars or other experts present papers on, analyze, and discuss a specific topic.

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colloquium British  

/ kəˈləʊkwɪəm /

noun

1. an informal gathering for discussion

2. an academic seminar

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• colloquia
  plural
• colloquiums
  plural

Etymology

Origin of colloquium

1600–10; < Latin, equivalent to colloqu ( ī ) ( col- col- ¹ + loquī to speak) + -ium -ium

Explanation

A colloquium is an academic conference or meeting. At a colloquium, you’ll spend a couple of days listening to lectures with a group of people who all know a lot about one particular subject. The root of colloquium is the Latin loqui, meaning “to talk, ” which is what people tend to do at a conference. If you’re attending a colloquium on hummingbirds, you’re going to meet a lot of biologists who talk about hummingbirds. If you’re giving a lecture at the same colloquium, you’d better hope you know a lot about hummingbirds or you might get run out of the conference!

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

colloquium colloquia colloquiums

The first recorded Scottish Parliament in 1235 was known as a colloquium, a place of conversation.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025

“A new role we will see is Chief Longevity Officer,” Waterhouse said at the University of Maine Center on Aging’s colloquium, “Work & Wellness for Older Adults.”

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 18, 2025

Abu Sitta had been invited by France’s left-wing Ecologists group in the Senate to speak at a colloquium Saturday about the situation in Gaza, according to the Senate press service.

From Seattle Times ● May 5, 2024

I discovered "Suburban Warriors" during a graduate school colloquium, and as I read it, I said, this doesn't sound like the conservatism I grew up with in Boston in the 1970s and early '80s.

From Salon ● Feb. 9, 2022

The give-and-take of scientific discussion was fostered by another Lawrence innovation: the Journal Club, a weekly colloquium to which all the Rad Lab staff and visitors from other departments were invited.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

Thus began seven years of solitude in which he traded math conferences and departmental colloquia for his cluttered office at Princeton and, when possible, his attic study.

From New York Times ● Jan. 31, 2022

Steiner went to the seminars and the colloquia, absorbing everything, enjoying it.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 25, 2021

But poets don’t want to be fodder for panels and colloquia, and Hutchinson’s poems are oppositional and disruptive, sometimes tauntingly so.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 13, 2016

We have thesis defenses and colloquia and conferences.

From Slate ● May 1, 2015

Subsequent invitations to the research colloquia were not to be expected, and even the most casual questioning of Maurice would provoke the suspicion that we were at it again.

From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson

More centers on campuses to promote discussion among viewpoints would only add to the ongoing debates that occur in seminars, faculty meetings, committees of various sorts and guest colloquiums.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 3, 2023

Many of the roughly 300 people assembling at the five-star Stein Eriksen Lodge Deer Valley for three days of colloquiums and seminars will be thinking about who might lead their party after November.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 9, 2016

The symposium, which took place over a month, comprised more than a dozen lectures, workshops, and colloquiums.

From The New Yorker ● May 23, 2016

"We're sick of people coming here to organize colloquiums on plant conversion as a social phenomenon," says Josef Fucik, a department head in the federal Ministry of Economics in Prague.

From Time Magazine Archive

Some picketed Woolworth stores; others ran high-powered colloquiums like Yale's "Challenge" and Princeton's "Response."

From Time Magazine Archive