Relation

/ɹɪˈleɪʃ(ə)n/ · noun

Meaning

The manner in which two things may be associated..

Definitions by Sense

1. The manner in which two things may be associated.
2. A member of one's extended family; a relative.
3. (chiefly in the plural) A relationship; the manner in which and tone with which people or states, etc. interact.
4. The act of relating a story.
5. (mathematics, set theory) A set of ordered tuples.
6. (databases) A set of tuples, implemented as a table in a relational database.
7. (mathematics) A statement of equality of two products of generators, used in the presentation of a group.
8. (category theory) A subobject of a product of objects.

Example Sentences

The relation between diet and health is complex.

Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.

Yes, he's a relation of mine, but only a distant one.

the foreign relations of the United States

Your relation of the events is different from mine.

1669, Letter from Dr. Merrett to Thomas Browne, in Simon Wilkin (ed.), Sir Thomas Browne’s Works including his Life and Correspondence, London: William Pickering, 1836, Volume I, p. 443, Many of the lupus piscis I have seen, and have bin informed by the king’s fishmonger they are taken on our coast, but was not satisfied for some reasons of his relation soe as to enter it into my Pinax […]

1691, Arthur Gorges (translator), The Wisdom of the Ancients by Francis Bacon (1609), London, Preface, […] seeing they are diversly related by Writers that lived near about one and the self-same time, we may easily perceive that they were common things, derived from precedent Memorials; and that they became various, by reason of the divers Ornaments bestowed on them by particular Relations […]

I shall you make relacyon By way of apostrofacyon […] How I, Skelton laureat, Devysed and also wrate Uppon a lewde curate, […]

Synonyms for relation

Antonyms for relation

Related Words

Word Forms

• relations

Usage Notes

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