Word: collude (verb)

Associations

"Collude" means to secretly work together with others, usually to do something wrong or illegal.

• In business, companies might collude to fix prices, which is against the law.
• Politicians could collude to influence an election unfairly.
• People might collude to cheat on a test by sharing answers secretly. A well-known synonym is "conspire." The difference is that "conspire" often implies planning something harmful or illegal, while "collude" focuses more on secret cooperation, usually with a negative or dishonest goal.

Substitution

You can replace "collude" with:

• conspire – more about planning bad actions together.
• cooperate – more general and usually positive, but can be negative if secret and dishonest.
• scheme – emphasizes secret planning, often with bad intent. Changing the word changes how strong or secret the action sounds.

Deconstruction

The word "collude" comes from Latin:

• prefix "col-" means "together."
• root "ludere" means "to play." Together, "collude" means "to play together," but in a secret or dishonest way.

Inquiry

• Can you think of a situation where people might collude without others knowing?
• How is colluding different from just working together openly?
• Have you ever seen or heard about collusion in sports, business, or school? What happened?