Other forms: correspondences
Correspondence is letters and messages passing between people, and the whole pile of them taken together. A bundle of envelopes tied with string in a drawer, an email chain with the bank that runs to forty messages, the box of a writer's letters that ends up in a library.
In that meaning it is uncountable: you have a lot of correspondence, never many correspondences. You keep up a correspondence WITH someone ABOUT something, and the person at the other end is your correspondent — which is also the word for a reporter, as in our Middle East correspondent. Correspondence has a second, cooler meaning: a match between two things, a correspondence between the figures in the two reports. That one is countable and takes BETWEEN. And a correspondence course is one you study at home, with the work sent back and forth.
1nouncorrespondenceLetters, emails and other messages exchanged between people; the exchanging of them.
“All correspondence about the account goes to that address.”
formal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
2nouncloseA close match or connection between two things.
“There is a clear correspondence between the two sets of figures.”
formal in this meaning — an editor’s judgement
3nounstudyStudy done at a distance, with work sent back and forth.
“He took a correspondence course in bookkeeping while working nights.”
correspondence is written communication.
Correspondence came through Middle English from Latin correspondentia, the noun standing behind correspond. The idea inside it is answering together: two things that answer to each other, whether that is two people writing back and forth for thirty years or two columns of numbers that line up.
Latin
correspondentia
Middle English
correspondence
English, today
correspondence
From Middle English correspondence, from Latin correspondentia. by surface analysis, correspond + -ence.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA