communication
Pluralcommunications (some meanings)
- 1The act or process of passing on or exchanging information, ideas, or feelings, by speaking, writing, signals, or other means.
Communication between distant computers relies on shared protocols.
Effective communication depends on both sender and receiver understanding the same code.
UsageUsually communication between two people or groups, or communication with someone.
- 2Something that is communicated, such as a message, letter, or conversation, especially an official or formal one.
The lawyer kept a record of each communication with her client.
A single communication from headquarters changed the entire plan.
UsageOne message is a communication from someone; the plural, communications, can mean a whole ongoing exchange.
Note
Shakespeare's Henry V sets argument beside "friendly communication," and the pairing shows the older reach of the word: a conversation between people, not just a message passing one way.
- 3A passageway or opening connecting two locations; a physical connection between them.
The fortress had a hidden communication leading down to the river.
Engineers sealed the communication between the old mine shafts.
UsageUsually communication between two places, or communication with one; it names a route, not a message.
Similarpassage, passageway, connection, link, channel
Note
Here nothing is said at all. A doorway, a sea route or a pipe lets one place reach another. John Arbuthnot in 1727 praises the Euxine Sea for the communication it has with Asia and Europe, and Patents for Inventions (1900) describes the communication between a tank and a pump.
- 4The systems that carry messages and information between people and places, such as the postal service and telephone networks.
Rebels seized the radio station and cut the capital's communications with the provinces.
The company builds communications satellites and the ground stations that control them.
Similartelecommunications
Note
A meaning that lives in the plural: communications are the wires, cables, post and radio links, while the singular stays with the act of communicating. The plural also keeps its -s when it stands before another noun, as in communications equipment or a communications satellite, where English usually drops it (a shoe shop, not a shoes shop).
Less common meanings
- 5Association or fellowship with others; the state of keeping company.
Evil communications corrupt good manners.
1611, The Holy Bible, King James VersionNote
A sense that survives mainly through one line of the King James Bible of 1611: "Evil communications corrupt good manners." Modern readers often take it to mean bad talk, but the warning is about bad company, meaning the people you keep rather than the words you hear.
- 6A passage or opening that links two tissues, organs, or body cavities, such as a defect joining two chambers of the heart.
- 7Taking part in the sacrament of Holy Communion.
We admit them in the Church to a right of Communication to drink of the Cup of the Bloud of Christ.
1672, William Cave, Primitive Christianity - 8A figure of speech in which a speaker says "we" rather than "I" or "you", presuming the listener shares the same sentiments.
Practice
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Origin
Latin commūnicō ('I share, I impart') gave commūnicātiō ('imparting, communicating'), which passed into Old French as communicacion and then into Middle English as comunicacioun ('discussion, association'). It can also be analyzed as communicate + -ion.