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

Mr. Moore, who has created acclaimed comic books and fiction, draws on all his talents in crafting this lurid collage of English culture past, present and future.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026

In the center of this collage is a giant, stern-faced Chávez.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 19, 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

He gestured to the vast collage of documents pinned to the walls around them.

From "Dactyl Hill Squad" by Daniel José Older

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

In the ’80s came his extraordinary multi-image photographic collages of friends including writer Christopher Isherwood and artist Don Bachardy and such landmarks as the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Canyon and Pearblossom Highway.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2026

And Shane Keisuke Berkery addresses his Irish-Japanese heritage with a painting that collages exaggerated images drawn from westerns, Irish photographic history, and his own family’s snapshots.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026

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

From BBC ● Nov. 28, 2025

We use the same-color paper for our collages.

From "Muffled" by Jennifer Gennari

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

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

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

However, there is wine available at this Atwater Village bar, along with the main entrée of the meetup: magazine collaging.

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