Relation definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

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noun A logical or natural association between two or more things; relevance of one to another; connection: the relation between smoking and heart disease.
noun The connection of people by blood or marriage; kinship.
noun A person connected to another by blood or marriage; a relative.

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The act of relating or telling; recital; narration. He schalle telle it anon to his Conseille, or discovere it to sum men that wille make relacioun to the Emperour. Mandeville, Travels, p. 235. I shall never forget a story of our host Zachary, who on the relation of our perill told us another of his owne. Evelyn, Diary, Oct. 16, 1644. I remember to have heard an old gentleman talk of the civil wars, and in his relation give an account of a general officer. Steele, Spectator, No. 497.
That which is related or told; an account; narrative: formerly applied to historical narrations or geographical descriptions: as, the Jesuit Relations. Sometime the Countrie of Strabo, to whom these our Relations are so much indebted. Purchas, Pilgrimage, p. 320. Oftimes relations heertofore accounted fabulous have bin after found to contain in them many foot-steps and reliques of somthing true. Milton, Hist. Eng., i. Political and military relations are for the greater part accounts of the ambition and violence of mankind. Burke, Abridg. of Eng. Hist.
A character of a plurality of things; a fact concerning two or more things, especially and more properly when it is regarded as a predicate of one of the things connecting it with the others; the condition of being such and such with regard to something else: as, the relation of a citizen to the state; the relation of demand and supply. Thus, suppose a locomotive blows off steam; this fact constitutes a relation between the locomotive and the steam so far as the “blowing” is conceived to be a character of the locomotive, and another relation so far as the “being blown” is conceived as a character of the steam, and both these relations together are embraced in the same relationship, or plural fact. This latter, also often called a relation, is by logicians called the foundation of the relation. The two or more subjects or things to which the plural fact relates are termed the relates or correlates; the one which is conceived as subject is specifically termed the subject of the relation, or the relate; the others the correlates. Words naming things in their character as relates are called relatives, as father, cousin. A set of relatives referring to the same relationship according as one or another object is taken as the relate are called correlatives: such are buyer, seller, commodity, price. The logical nomenclature of relations depends on the consideration of individual relations, or relations subsisting between the individuals of a single set of correlates, as opposed to general relations, which, really or in conception, subsist between many such sets. Relations are either dual—that is, connecting couples of objects, as in the examples above—or plural—that is, connecting more than two correlates, as the relation of a buyer to the seller, the thing bought, and the price. Every individual dual relation is either a relation of a thing to itself or a relation of a thing to something else. Logical relations are those which are known from logical reflection: opposed to real relations, which are known by generalization and abstraction from ordinary observations. The chief logical relations are those of incompossibility, coexistence, identity, and otherness. Real dual relations are of five classes: (1) differences or alio-relations, being relations which nothing can bear to itself, as being greater than; (2) sibi-relations or concurrencies, being relations which nothing can bear to anything else, as self-consciousness; (3) agreements, or relations which everything bears to itself, as similarity; (4) relations which everything bears to everything else, which may be called distances; and (5) variform relations, which some things only bear to themselves, and which subsist between some pairs of things only. Other divisions of relations are important in logic, as the following. An iterative or repeating relation is such that a thing may at once be in that relation and its converse to the same or different things, as the relation of father to son, or spouse to spouse: opposed to a finial or non-repeating relation, as that of husband to wife. An equiparance or convertible relation, opposed to a disquiparance or inconvertible relation, is such that, if anything is in that relation to another, the latter is in the same relation to the former, as that of cousins. A relation which cannot subsist between two things reciprocally, as that of greater and less, may be called an irreciprocable relation, opposed to a reciprocable relation, which admits reciprocation as possible merely. A relation such that if A is so related to B, and B so related to C, then A is so related to C, is called a transitive, in opposition to an intransitive relation. A relation such that if A is so related to something else, C, there is a third thing, B, which is so related to C, and to which A is so related, is called a concatenated, in opposition to an inconcatenated relation. A relation subsisting between objects in an endless or self-returning series is called an inexhaustible, in opposition to an exhaustible relation. If there is a self-returning series, the relation is termed cyclic, in opposition to acyclic. A transitive relation such that of any two objects of a certain category one has this relation to the other may be called a linear relation; and the series of objects so formed may be called the line of the relation. According as this is continuous or discontinuous, finite or infinite, and in the latter case discretely or absolutely, these designations may be applied to the relation. According to the nominalistic (including the conceptualistic) view, a relation is a mere product of the mind. Adding to this doctrine that of the relativity of knowledge, that we know only relations, Kant reached his conclusion that things in themselves are absolutely incognizable. But most Kantian students come to deny the existence of things in themselves, and so reach an idealistic realism which holds relations to be as real as any facts. The realistic view is expressed in the dictum of Scotus that every relation without which, or a term of which, its foundation cannot be is, in the thing (realiter), identical with that foundation—that is, what really is is a fact relating to two or more things, and that fact viewed as a predicate of one of those things is the relation. Thus is relacion rect, ryht as adiectif and substantif A-cordeth in alle kyndes with his antecedent. Piers Plowman (C), iv. 363. The last sort of complex ideas is that we call relation, which consists in the consideration and comparing one idea with another. Locke, Human Understanding, ii. 12. The only difference between relative names and any others consists in their being given in pairs; and the reason of their being given in pairs is not the existence between two things of a mystical bond called a relation and supposed to have a kind of shadowy and abstract reality, but a very simple peculiarity in the concrete fact which the two names are intended to mark. J. S. Mill, Note to James Mill's Human Mind, xiv. 2. In natural science, I have understood, there is nothing petty to the mind that has a large vision of relations. George Eliot, Mill on the Floss, iv. 1. Most relations are feeling of an entirely different order from the terms they relate. The relation of similarity, e. g., may equally obtain between jasmine and tuberose, or between Mr. Browning's verses and Mr. Story's; it is itself neither odorous nor poetical, and those may well be pardoned who have denied to it all sensational content whatever. W. James, Mind, XII. 13.

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The basis of their relation was the fact that each admired and stimulated the other. — She Came Back - Patricia Wentworth - aka The Traveller Returns - Miss Silver 09 - 1945
A relation is in Domain / Key Normal Form if every constraint on the relation is a logical consequence of the definition of keys and domains. — What the hell?
In some ways, as two single missionaries live and work together, the relation is as close as that between husband and wife; but in this case the two have not chosen one another_. — Have We No Rights? A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries
Among the lower castes of the Bihari Hindoos a widow may marry the younger brother of her deceased husband, to whom her relation is always one of especial intimacy and familiarity. — Folkways A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals
This relation was an uncle, and, strange as it may seem, a Scotchman--a Highlander, who had strayed to Corsica in early life, and had there married the Colonel's sister. — The Young Voyageurs Boy Hunters in the North

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