German noun, masculine · CEFR A2

der Kollege

Meaning in English: colleague

Basic word, outside the top 5,000noun · derLevel A21 form in the top 5,000

Not one of the 5,000 most common words in written German, but part of the core vocabulary in our Jobs in German list.

Learn this word

Add der Kollege and its 1 form to your reviews. Progress stays in this browser.

Test my vocabulary

Example

Mein Kollege hat heute Geburtstag.

It's my colleague's birthday today.

Der, die or das?

Kollege is masculine: der Kollege. Careful: it is an exception. Nouns ending in -e are usually die (170 of 193 in the list). How to tell the gender from the ending.

Forms of Kollege in the top 5,000

Kollege itself is not in the top 5,000, but this form of it is:

Kollegen#975
colleagues; colleague (acc./dat.)A2

Meine Kollegen sind sehr hilfsbereit.
My colleagues are very helpful.

How common is Kollege?

In the news and web texts the list is counted from, Kollege appears 14 times per million words — about once every 74,000 words. That is below the cut-off: the last of the top 5,000 appears about 16 times per million. Its form Kollegen (#975) is in the top 5,000, though.

A2 means an elementary word, usually learned in the first year.

Jobs: more words

All 30 words: Jobs in German

In these word lists

Translations, levels and examples were written with AI help and are awaiting review by a native speaker — how the list was made.