link

Noun

link (plural links)

1. A connection between places, people, events, things, or ideas.

   The mayor’s assistant serves as the link to the media.

   • Cowper

     The link of brotherhood, by which / One common Maker bound me to the kind.

   • Gascoigne

     And so by double links enchained themselves in lover's life.

2. One element of a chain or other connected series.

   The third link of the silver chain needs to be resoldered.

   The weakest link.

3. Abbreviation of hyperlink.

   The link on the page points to the sports scores.

4. (computing) The connection between buses or systems.

   A by-N-link is composed of N lanes.

5. (mathematics) A space comprising one or more disjoint knots.
6. (Sussex) a thin wild bank of land splitting two cultivated patches and often linking two hills.
   • 2008, Richard John King, A Handbook for Travellers in Kent and Sussex

     They used formerly to live in caves or huts dug into the side of a bank or "link," and lined with heath or straw.

7. (figuratively) an individual person or element in a system
   • 2010, James O. Young, My Sheep Know My Voice: anointed poetry, AuthorHouse, page 32:

     But know that God is the strongest link.

   • 2010, William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler, Universal Principles of Design, RockPort, page 262:

     The fuse is the weakest link in the system. As such, the fuse is also the most valuable link in the system.

   • 2010, Stephen Fairweather, The Missing Book of Genesis, AuthorHouse, page 219:

     “ […] This is so that nobody can change the way every link must talk about the formula that I taught to make a real Chain of Universal Love and not a Chain of Love of a group or sect.”

8. Anything doubled and closed like a link of a chain.

   a link of horsehair

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Mortimer to this entry?)

9. A sausage that is not a patty.
10. (kinematics) Any one of the several elementary pieces of a mechanism, such as the fixed frame, or a rod, wheel, mass of confined liquid, etc., by which relative motion of other parts is produced and constrained.
11. (engineering) Any intermediate rod or piece for transmitting force or motion, especially a short connecting rod with a bearing at each end; specifically (in steam engines) the slotted bar, or connecting piece, to the opposite ends of which the eccentric rods are jointed, and by means of which the movement of the valve is varied, in a link motion.
12. (surveying) The length of one joint of Gunter's chain, being the hundredth part of it, or 7.92 inches, the chain being 66 feet in length.
13. (chemistry) A bond of affinity, or a unit of valence between atoms; applied to a unit of chemical force or attraction.
14. (plural) The windings of a river; the land along a winding stream.
    • 1822, Allan Cunningham, "The King of the Peak", in Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry, v. 1, p. 222.

      'Dame Foljambe,' said the old man, 'the march of thy tale is like the course of the Wye, seventeen miles of links and windings down a fair valley five miles long. […] '

Related terms

• link farm

Verb

link (third-person singular simple present links, present participle linking, simple past and past participle linked)

1. (transitive) To connect two or more things.
   • Eustace

     All the tribes and nations that composed it [the Roman Empire] were linked together, not only by the same laws and the same government, but by all the facilities of commodious intercourse, and of frequent communication.

2. (intransitive, of a Web page) To contain a hyperlink to another page.

   My homepage links to my wife's.

3. (transitive, Internet) To supply (somebody) with a hyperlink; to direct by means of a link.

   Haven't you seen his Web site? I'll link you to it.

4. (transitive, Internet) To post a hyperlink to.

   Stop linking those unfunny comics all the time!

5. (transitive) To demonstrate a correlation between two things.
6. (software compilation) To combine objects generated by a compiler into a single executable.

Noun

link (plural links)

1. (obsolete) A torch, used to light dark streets.
   • 1854, Dickens, Hard Times, Chapter 7:

     You were coming out of the Italian Opera, ma’am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour, when I hadn’t a penny to buy a link to light you.’

   • 1883, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

     "Give me a loan of the link, Dick."

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)

Verb

link (third-person singular simple present links, present participle linking, simple past and past participle linked)

1. (Scotland) To skip or trip along smartly.

(Can we add an example for this sense?)

Inflection

Synonyms

• hyperlink

Adjective

link (comparative linker, superlative linkst)

1. dangerous
2. (criminal slang) sly; cunning
3. (slang) jolly, nice

Noun

link m (plural links, diminutive linkje n)

1. physical connection, as in a hardware cable
2. (figuratively) logical connection, as in reasoning about causality
3. hyperlink

Noun

link (plural linkek)

1. link, hyperlink

Adjective

link (comparative linkebb, superlative leglinkebb)

1. (colloquial) fishy, shifty (dishonest, criminal, unreliable)

   link alak ― crook

Derived terms

• linkare

Declension

Synonyms

• hiperłącze

Synonyms

• linque
• hiperligação
• ligação