co-locate vs. collocate

[Stacy Tegner]

I have a witness (very smart, Ph.d) who says "co-location" but, yet, I hear "collocate" (COLE-LOCATE). I'm trying to be consistent, but she definitely pronounces them different. She also reads from two different zibs ~ one has "co-location" in it and one has "collocate" in it. Should I just put them in how I hear them each time and not worry about the inconsistencies?

To confuse things even more, she does say "co-located" too, but it's so fast I'm not sure which one she's saying! She's actually very fast throughout, so I would tend to think she's just slurring together "co-locate" and I'm just hearing "collocate," but since"collocate" is in a doc. and it's a real (the correct?) word, I'm being ultra-anal and obsessing on what to put each time. Maybe I've just done co-locate wrong all these years and should put in collocate and all its variations and move on!?!? Of course, this was probably clear as mud since I'm typing as I think ~ very dangerous :P

Help ~ someone just give me an answer so I can move on ;)) I'm starting to hate this word!

[Karen Goldstein]

Collocation and colocation are two different words. According to dictionary.com, collocation means arrangement, especially of words in a sentence. Colocation is the act of sharing or being designated to share the same place. You have to figure out from context, which one she's using.

Then: Collocate is the verb, with collocated in the past tense and collocation is the noun.

Colocate is the verb, with colocated in the past tense and colocation is the noun.

Once again, you'd have to figure it out by context. And no, I don't think you're ultra-anal. A certain degree of anality (????) is needed for this job.