When several elements compete for the same bucket in a hash table, this situation is called a collision. A collision occurs when two or more keys hash to the same index or slot in the hash table, causing a clash among the elements

. To handle collisions, various collision resolution techniques are used, such as:

• Chaining , where each bucket holds a linked list (or chain) of all elements that hash to that bucket

• Open addressing , which finds another open slot in the hash table by probing (e.g., linear probing, quadratic probing, double hashing)

Thus, the term for multiple elements competing for the same bucket in a hash table is "collision."