relation / relations / relationships?

[Anonymous]

Hi teacher and all students,first of all,I want to thank y'all for replying to my last post,there's no way I could post a reply to my original post since no such privilege is given to Guest but registered user.

Ok,here is my question. While I was looking up the word "relation" in the Oxford Advanced's Learner Dictionary(revised third edition),I found these two examples:

the relation between mother and child/between weather and the crops
the friendly relations between my country and yours

I just can't figure out why the first one doesn't with an (s),while the second one makes more sense to me with an (s).

Btw,do they have the word "relationships" in english usage?


Appreciate it if u would answer these questions.Thank you in advance.

[Francois]

You can do a search on this site, we've already discussed this point before, and the bottom line was that they seem to constantly overlap *sigh*.

FRC

[blacknomi]

http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/vi...amp;highlight=

If you are still interested. Good luck! :)