Other forms: connections
On the railway, a connection is the second train you change onto. Miss your connection, a tight connection, the connection was held for us.
The word is much wider than that. A connection is any link between two things — the connection between smoking and cancer — and between two people: family connections, a useful connection. It is also a physical or electrical join, and an internet connection. Note the spelling, which is connection everywhere in modern English although connexion survived in Britain into the twentieth century. And in connection with is a formal phrase meaning about.
1nounrailA train or flight you change onto to continue a journey.
“We had eight minutes to make the connection.”
2nounlinkA link between two things.
“There is no connection between the two cases.”
3nounnetworkA link to a network or power supply.
“The connection drops out every evening at seven.”
4nounusefulSomebody useful you know.
“He got the job through a family connection.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
connection is a link.
Latin connexio comes from connectere — com-, together, plus nectere, to bind, the same verb behind annex and nexus. A connection is a binding together, and every English sense is that knot seen in a different material.
Middle English
connexioun
English, today
connection
Built from
From Middle English connexioun. From Middle English conneccioun, connexioun, conneccyon, conneccion, from Latin connexionem (nominative connexio (“a conclusion, binding together”)), from connectō, an alternative spelling of cōnectō (“to bind together”), from compound of co- (“together”) and nectō (“to bind”). In American English mid-18c., spelling shifted from connexion to connection (equivalent to connect + ion), thus making connexion British dated and connection in international use.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA