Wiktionary:Collocations
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In linguistics, a collocation is a combination of words that occurs with much higher frequency than would be expected by chance. Collocations can be added to Wiktionary entries.
Multi-word expressions that have or could have their own articles should in general not be listed as collocations but rather as derived terms.
Which entries may contain collocations
[edit]Collocations may be added for all senses of adjective, adverb, noun and verb lemmas in all languages, except for senses that are merely defined as forms of other entries. Further parts of speech may become permissible in the future after consensus has been reached for them.
Collocations must contain the word in the sense for which they are listed or a non-lemma or alternative form thereof, but not derived terms. For a collocation to be allowed to be listed in the article head, it has to either contain head, heads, headed etc. whereas merely containing headache does not suffice.
Which format collocations should be provided in
[edit]Unlike example sentences, collocations should not be complete sentences. Collocations should be given in a lemmatized form, including the infinitive marker if applicable (e.g. English to), including (prepositional) objects, potentially in parentheses if optional. For example, the following is a properly lemmatized collocation for the entry verdict:
- to pass one's verdict (on something/somebody)
Translations of non-English collocations should, if possible, be as idiomatic (sense 1) in English as possible and not literal.
How collocations should be formatted
[edit]Collocations shall always be wrapped in {{collocation}} (alias {{co}}), or {{coi}}. Like example sentences, the word in the sense for which the collocation is provided shall be made bold.
Similar to nyms, collocations may either be placed under the corresponding sense, after all nyms but before all example sentences, or under a separate ====Collocations==== header (that is one level higher than the corresponding part of speech header) as as a bulleted list. The bulleted list may be segmented with {{sense}} or {{co-top}} in case the part of speech comes with multiple senses.
The three permissible styles are as follows (for long collocations, {{co}} may be substituted for {{coi}} in each case):
# Definition.
#: {{coi|en|text}}
or
# Definition.
====Collocations====
{{sense|definition}}
* {{coi|en|text}}
or
# Definition.
====Collocations====
{{co-top|definition}}
* {{coi|en|text}}
{{co-bottom}}
The {{sense}} template and the repeated definition in the {{co-top}} header may be omitted for sole definitions.