Other forms: relationships
A relationship is the connection between two people — family, friends, colleagues, or a couple. A good working relationship, their relationship broke down, a difficult relationship with her father.
Used on its own with no qualifier, it usually means a romantic one: they are in a relationship. That is a modern default and it is worth knowing, because a relationship with your bank manager needs the qualifier to avoid comedy. The word also covers connections between things rather than people: the relationship between smoking and heart disease, which is the standard phrasing in research writing. Note relationship with a person and relationship between two things.
1nounbondThe way two people behave towards each other.
“They have a good working relationship.”
synonyms: connection, bond
2nounrelationshipA romantic connection between two people.
“She has been in a relationship for three years.”
3nounconnectedThe way two things are connected.
“The relationship between the two figures is not straightforward.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
relationship is a connection.
Proto-Indo-European
*skey-
Middle English
schip
English
ship
English, today
relationship
From relation + -ship. Displaced native Old English sibb. ship comes from Middle English schip. From Middle English chip, schepe, schip, schup, scip, scippe, ship, shup, ssip, from Old English sċip, sċyp, from Proto-West Germanic skip, from Proto-Germanic skipą (“ship; tub, vessel”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European skey- (“to split”). More at shift. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA