Word.ws English Dictionary

call collect

call collect verb: to make a telephone call in which the cost of the call is paid by the person receiving the call; to place a collect call.

Verb

call collect (third-person singular simple present calls collect, present participle calling collect, simple past and past participle called collect)

  1. (US, intransitive) To make a telephone call in which the cost of the call is paid by the person receiving the call; to place a collect call.
    • In the days of payphones, if you had no coins, you could call collect and hope that the callee would accept the charges.
  2. (US, transitive) To call (someone) in this way.
    • Call me what you want — just don’t call me collect.
    • Please call me to let me know you’re safe — you’re welcome to call me collect.

Synonyms of call collect

Forms of call collect

third-person singular presentcalls collect
present participlecalling collect
past participlecalled collect
pastcalled collect

Questions about call collect

What does call collect mean?
Call collect means to make a telephone call in which the cost of the call is paid by the person receiving the call; to place a collect call.
What part of speech is call collect?
Call collect is a verb.
What is the past tense of call collect?
The past tense of call collect is called collect.

Words near call collect in the dictionary

  1. call by value
  2. call center
  3. call centers
  4. call centre
  5. call centres
  6. call collect
  7. call date
  8. call dates
  9. call delay
  10. call delays
  11. call down

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: call collect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “call collect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/call_collect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.