Definition of "relation"

Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.

1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company

I shall you make relacyonBy way of apostrofacyon […] How I, Skelton laureat,Devysed and also wrateUppon a lewde curate, […]

c. 1503–1512, John Skelton, Ware the Hauke; republished in John Scattergood, editor, John Skelton: The Complete English Poems, 1983, page 62, lines 29–30, 33–35

Many of the lupus piscis I have seen, and have bin informed by the king’s fishmonger they are taken on our coast, but was not satisfied for some reasons of his relation soe as to enter it into my Pinax […]

1669, Letter from Dr. Merrett to Thomas Browne, in Simon Wilkin (ed.), Sir Thomas Browne’s Works including his Life and Correspondence, London: William Pickering, 1836, Volume I, p. 443

[…] seeing they are diversly related by Writers that lived near about one and the self-same time, we may easily perceive that they were common things, derived from precedent Memorials; and that they became various, by reason of the divers Ornaments bestowed on them by particular Relations […]

1691, Arthur Gorges (translator), The Wisdom of the Ancients by Francis Bacon (1609), London, Preface

Jones […] was easily prevailed on to satisfy Mr Dowling's curiosity, by relating the history of his birth and education, which he did, like Othello. […] Mr Dowling was indeed very greatly affected with this relation; for he had not divested himself of humanity by being an attorney.

1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

[…] Signs are, first of all, physical things: for example, chalk marks on a blackboard, pencil or ink marks on paper, sound waves produced in a human throat. According to Reichenbach, "What makes them signs is the intermediary position they occupy between an object and a sign user, i.e., a person." For a sign to be a sign, or to function as such, it is necessary that the person take account of the object it designates. Thus, anything in nature may or may not be a sign, depending on a person's attitude toward it. A physical thing is a sign when it appears as a substitute for, or representation of, the object for which it stands with respect to the sign user. The three-place relation between sign, object, and sign user is called the sign relation or relation of denotation.

1974, Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., chapter 7, in The Myth of Mental Illness, page 107