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correlation

noun

Simple meaning

A reciprocal relation between two or more things.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

kawruhlayshuhn

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IPA pronunciation (US)

kɔɹəˈleɪʃən

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A reciprocal relation between two or more things

  2. A reciprocal, parallel or complementary relationship between two or more comparable objects.

  3. algebra

    An isomorphism from a projective space to the dual of a projective space, often to the dual of itself.

  4. statistics

    One of the several measures of the linear statistical relationship between two random variables, indicating both the strength and direction of the relationship.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
General English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A reciprocal relation between two or more things

Used this way, correlation is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use correlation

  • “What is the correlation between those two variables?”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Several / reciprocal

correlation coefficientpositive correlationnegative correlationcorrelation function

Other combinations

correlation matrixmultiple correlationdirect correlationpartial correlation

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • correlation tablenounCompound term

    A two-way tabulation of the relations between correlates.

  • correlation matrixnounCompound term

    A matrix giving the correlations between all pairs of data sets.

  • correlation coefficientnounCompound term

    A statistic representing how closely two variables co-vary.

  • chance-half correlationnounCompound term

    A correlation coefficient calculated between scores on two halves of a test.

  • curvilinear correlationnounCompound term

    Any correlation in which the rates of change of the variables is not constant.

  • direct correlationnounCompound term

    A correlation in which large values of one variable are associated with large values of the other and small with small.

Related words

Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.

  • correlational analysisnounRelated term

    The use of statistical correlation to evaluate the strength of the relations between variables.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: reciprocal relation between two or more things

correlation coefficient

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.