Liaison

How to spell liaison

7 letters · 3 syllables

8 of the 24 people asked to spell liaison in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is liason. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

liason liaison

What people typed instead

• liason6 people

How to pronounce liaison

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does liaison mean?

1. nounA person or means of communication that coordinates and connects separate groups or parties.

Liaison in a sentence

• She's the liaison between the two teams.

• She acts as the liaison between management and staff.

• Good communication between the departments needs a dedicated liaison.

Where does liaison come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the French liaison, meaning 'a binding' or 'a joining together', which in turn descends from the Latin ligare, the verb 'to bind' or 'to tie'. In its earliest English use during the 1600s it was a cooking term, naming the thickening of egg yolk or flour that binds a sauce together, a sense still used by chefs today. From that idea of binding it broadened to mean a close connection between people or groups, and by the early twentieth century, partly through wartime military usage, it settled into its modern sense of communication or coordination between separate parties. The same Latin ligare quietly underlies a whole family of English words about tying and connecting, including 'ligament', 'oblige', and 'ally'. The notorious spelling trap is the double vowel run 'iai' in the middle: writers reliably want to drop a letter or reorder them, so it helps to remember the buried French verb lier 'to tie'.

How the word is built

• liais- (from French liaison: a binding, from Latin ligare 'to bind')
• -on (noun suffix)