Adjacent Words

liaison definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a usually secretive or illicit sexual relationship [syn: affair, affaire, intimacy, liaison, involvement, amour]
2: a channel for communication between groups; "he provided a liaison with the guerrillas" [syn: liaison, link, contact, inter-group communication]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: French, from Middle French, from lier, from Old French Date: circa 1648 1. a binding or thickening agent used in cooking 2. a. a close bond or connection ; interrelationship b. an illicit sexual relationship ; affair 3a 3. a. communication for establishing and maintaining mutual understanding and cooperation (as between parts of an armed force) b. one that establishes and maintains liaison 4. the pronunciation of an otherwise absent consonant sound at the end of the first of two consecutive words the second of which begins with a vowel sound and follows without pause

U.S. Military Dictionary

That contact or intercommunication maintained between elements of military forces or other agencies to ensure mutual understanding and unity of purpose and action. (JP 3-08)

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 communication or cooperation, esp. between military forces or units. 2 an illicit sexual relationship. 3 the binding or thickening agent of a sauce. 4 the sounding of an ordinarily silent final consonant before a word beginning with a vowel (or a mute h in French). Phrases and idioms: liaison officer an officer acting as a link between allied forces or units of the same force. Etymology: F f. lier bind f. L ligare

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Liaison Li`ai`son" (l[-e]`[asl]`z[^o]N"), n. [F., fr. L. ligatio, fr. ligare to bind. See Ligature, and cf. Ligation.] A union, or bond of union; an intimacy; especially, an illicit intimacy between a man and a woman.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. Liaison is co-operation and the exchange of information between different organizations or between different sections of an organization. Liaison between police forces and the art world is vital to combat art crime. ...those who work in close liaison with alcoholics. 2. If someone acts as liaison with a particular group, or between two or more groups, their job is to encourage co-operation and the exchange of information. I have a professor on my staff here as liaison with our higher education institutions... She acts as a liaison between patients and staff. N-UNCOUNT: also a N, oft N with n 3. You can refer to a sexual or romantic relationship between two people as a liaison. She embarked on a series of sexual liaisons with society figures. = affair N-COUNT

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. [Fr.] 1. Amour, intrigue, illicit intimacy, criminal intimacy. 2. (Rare.) Connection, union, bond of union, relation.

Moby Thesaurus

accord, addition, adjunct, adulterous affair, adultery, affair, affairs, affiliation, affinity, agent, agglomeration, agglutination, aggregation, alliance, amor, amour, approximation, articulation, assemblage, association, bond, bracketing, broker, closeness, clustering, combination, communication, concatenation, concourse, concurrence, confluence, congeries, conglomeration, conjugation, conjunction, connectedness, connection, contact, contiguity, contrariety, convergence, copulation, coupling, cuckoldry, dealings, deduction, disjunction, distributor, entanglement, eternal triangle, filiation, flirtation, forbidden love, gathering, go-between, hanky-panky, homology, hookup, illicit love, infidelity, intercommunication, intercourse, interlinking, intermediary, intermedium, intimacy, intrigue, jobber, joinder, joining, jointure, junction, knotting, link, linkage, linking, love affair, marriage, mediary, mediator, medium, meeting, merger, merging, middleman, mutual attraction, nearness, pairing, propinquity, proximity, rapport, relatedness, relation, relations, relationship, romance, romantic tie, similarity, splice, symbiosis, sympathy, tie, tie-in, tie-up, triangle, unfaithfulness, unification, union, wholesaler, yoking