To Collude With Someone Meaning
Definition: To plan with someone secretly.
To collude with someone is to get together with another person in order to make plans. The difference between colluding and planning is that colluding is always done in secret.
While it is possible to collude with someone for a positive reason, such as planning a surprise birthday party, colluding is more often a negative action. Usually, people who collude together are planning a secret that will be detrimental or even harmful to another person.
Origin of To Collude With Someone
The word collude has Latin roots. The root lude comes from ludere, which means to play. The prefix col- means with or together. Therefore, the literal translation of this word is to play together.
This meaning of collude relates to how the word is used today. By plotting and planning ways to trick or surprise others, people who collude with each other are practically playing around with other people’s lives. It has been in use since at least the 1500s.
There is also a noun form of this word: collusion. That is the act of meeting to plan trickery or deceit against others.
Examples of To Collude With Someone
Oftentimes, collusion has to do with charging too much money or not paying enough money for something. For example, employers in the same field may collude with each other to lower their salaries offered to employees. By colluding to all lower salaries, all of the company bosses would benefit at the expense of their employees.
The mob may collude with police to let certain criminals go free in exchange for a payment to crooked officers. In this way, both the mob and the police who receive payments benefit, but the public and innocent citizens do not.
- The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election. – New York Times
- The Justice Department sued AT&T on Wednesday, arguing that the company’s DirecTV subsidiary masterminded a collusive arrangement among pay-TV companies to block expansion of the Dodgers channel. – LA Times
The phrase collude with someone is to plot or scheme with someone in secret.