RELATION Synonyms: 135 Similar and Opposite Words

relation

noun

ri-ˈlā-shən

as in interaction

relations plural doings between individuals or groups relations between the rival newspapers remained friendly despite their competition for the same stories

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Relevance

as in relative

a person connected with another by blood or marriage he and I are relations on my mother's side

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as in relationship

the fact or state of having something in common there's no relation between you losing your favorite baseball hat and your team losing the game

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in partnership

the state of having shared interests or efforts (as in social or business matters) our intramural baseball team had a relation with the other baseball teams in the area

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in sex

relations plural sexual union involving penetration of the vagina by the penis a law that prohibits relations between close relatives

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of relation But there’s been almost no response from any of the countries that Trump mentioned by name — more than half of whom already have diplomatic relations with Israel — and no statement of support from an Israeli government that would reap enormous benefits from such a deal. —

Matt Bradley, NBC news, 29 May 2026 Analysts say the White House would favor a right-wing candidate, and that a victory for either Valencia or de la Espriella would probably mean a return to closer cooperation with Washington on security policy, after relations deteriorated under Petro. —

Catherine Ellis, Miami Herald, 28 May 2026 Although much of hijra identity and discourse are constructed in relation to Hinduism, some hijras come from Muslim or Christian backgrounds. —

Charles Preston, Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 May 2026 Their rapport is in contrast to relations between Hardy and Glasser. —

K.j. Yossman, Variety, 28 May 2026 See All Example Sentences for relation

Recent Examples of Synonyms for relation

Noun

Goldman Sachs forecasts a 24-fold increase in token consumption by 2030, reaching 120 quadrillion tokens per month, as agentic AI systems replace single-prompt interactions with multi-step tasks that consume orders of magnitude more compute per query.

— Rakesh Kumar, Fortune, 30 May 2026
The platform also represents an early step toward bio-hybrid control systems that emphasize interaction and adaptation, shifting the focus from controlling living organisms to listening to them.

— Bojan Stojkovski, Interesting Engineering, 30 May 2026