collide

To impact directly, especially if violent.

Verb

  1. To impact directly, especially if violent.
    • When a body collides with another, then momentum is conserved.
    • Across this space the attraction urges them. They collide, they recoil, they oscillate. - 1865, John Tyndall, The Constitution of the Universe, published 1869, page 14:
    • No longer rocking and swaying, but clashing and colliding. - 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the...
  2. To come into conflict, or be incompatible.
    • China collided with the modern world.
  3. To meet; to come into contact.
    • Out of the doubts that fill my mind / I somehow find, you and I collide - 2004, “Collide”, in Stop All the World Now, performed by Howie Day:
    • I knew when we collided / you're the one I have decided who's one of my kind - 2009, “Hey, Soul Sister”, in Save Me, San Francisco, performed by Train:
  4. To cause to collide.

Origin

From Latin collīdō (“to clash, strike, dash, beat, or press together”), from con- (“together”) + laedō (“to strike, collide, hurt”) (whence col- (“assimilated form of com-”)).

Forms

collides colliding collided

Synonyms

clash

Related

allide allision collision elide elision lesion

Derived

collider noncolliding recollide uncollided uncolliding