Meaning
A romantic or sexual relationship that is deliberately left undefined, with the partners unclear about the exact nature or extent of their commitment to each other. It typically implies an arrangement that has the texture of a relationship without the label, obligations, or stated future. Associated especially with younger adults and dating-app culture. Informal and slightly wry, usually implying mild frustration or ambivalence about the lack of definition. Regional use: General English; strongest among Generation Z and online dating discourse.
Origin
No single coiner is reliably documented; the word formed as a blend of situation and relationship and surfaced in internet slang in the mid-2000s, with Merriam-Webster dating its first known use to that period and early entries appearing on Urban Dictionary in the late 2000s. It spread slowly through forum and blog usage, then surged in the late 2010s and 2020s as TikTok and dating-app discourse made relationship labelling a running conversation among Generation Z. In 2023 it drew enough lookup traffic to finish as a finalist for Oxford University Press's Word of the Year (which was won by 'rizz'), and Merriam-Webster carries a full dictionary entry defining it as a loosely defined relationship between partners unclear about their commitment. Its exact first use remains unknown.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- in a situationship
- situational relationship
- situationships
Usage Examples
- They had been in a situationship for a year, texting daily but never calling each other partners.
- Defining the situationship felt riskier than leaving it unspoken, so neither of them raised it.
- Her friends tired of hearing about the situationship and asked whether he had ever actually called it a relationship.