relation

plural relations

1. countableuncountableThe manner in which two things may be associated.

   The relation between diet and health is complex.

   2 more examples

   There's no linear relation between mortality and size.

   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.

   1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: connection, link, relationship

2. countableuncountableA member of one's extended family; a relative.

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

3. countablein pluraluncountableA relationship; the manner in which and tone with which people or states, etc. interact.

   the foreign relations of the United States

4. countableuncountableThe act of relating a story.

   Your relation of the events is different from mine.

   4 more examples

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

   c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, →OCLC, page 62, lines 29–30, 33–35

   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 […]

   Jones […] was easily prevailed on to satisfy Mr Dowling's curiosity, by relating the history of his birth and education, which he did, like Othello. […] Mr Dowling was indeed very greatly affected with this relation; for he had not divested himself of humanity by being an attorney.

   1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

   Synonyms: recounting, tell

5. countableuncountablemathematicsA set of ordered tuples.

   1 more example

   […]Signs are, first of all, physical things: for example, chalk marks on a blackboard, pencil or ink marks on paper, sound waves produced in a human throat. According to Reichenbach, "What makes them signs is the intermediary position they occupy between an object and a sign user, i.e., a person." For a sign to be a sign, or to function as such, it is necessary that the person take account of the object it designates. Thus, anything in nature may or may not be a sign, depending on a person's attitude toward it. A physical thing is a sign when it appears as a substitute for, or representation of, the object for which it stands with respect to the sign user. The three-place relation between sign, object, and sign user is called the sign relation or relation of denotation.

   1974, Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., chapter 7, in The Myth of Mental Illness, →ISBN, page 107

   1. countableuncountablemathematicsA set of ordered pairs; a binary relation.

      Equality is a symmetric relation, while divisibility is not.

6. countableuncountablecomputingA set of tuples, implemented as a table in a relational database.

   This relation uses the customer's social security number as a key.

7. countableuncountablemathematicsA statement of equality of two products of generators, used in the presentation of a group.
8. countableuncountablecategory theoryA subobject of a product of objects.
9. countablein pluraloftenuncountableoften collocated: sexual relationThe act of intercourse.

   have relations with

   1 more example

   have sexual relations with