relationship
noun
Simple meaning
Relatedness or connection by blood or marriage or adoption.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
reelayshuhnshipSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ɹiˈleɪʃənʃɪp
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.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
anthropology
Relatedness or connection by blood or marriage or adoption
Connection or association; the condition of being related.
A way in which two or more people behave and are involved with each other
Kinship; being related by blood or marriage.
A romantic or sexual involvement.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner (estimated)
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (anthropology) relatedness or connection by blood or marriage or adoption
Used this way, relationship is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in family or home contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Family/home
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use relationship
- “The relationship between mothers and their children.”noun
- “He didn't want his wife to know of the relationship.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A relation between people.
The relationship between wife and husband.
A relation between persons.
A relationship involving sexual intimacy.
A formal contractual relationship established to provide for regular banking or brokerage or business services.
Relatedness or connection by blood or marriage or adoption.
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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.