In
corpus linguistics, a
collocation is a sequence of words or
terms that
co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In
phraseology,
collocation is a sub-type of
phraseme. An example of a phraseological collocation, as propounded by
Michael Halliday, is the expression
strong tea. While the same meaning could be conveyed by the roughly equivalent *
powerful tea, this expression is considered incorrect by English speakers. Conversely, the corresponding expression for
computer,
powerful computers is preferred over *
strong computers. Phraseological collocations should not be confused with
idioms, where meaning is derived, whereas collocations are mostly compositional.