Learn English – “Relation” versus “relationship”

The ledger is the collection of accounts.

Ledger and accounts relate to standard accounting practice.

You first record any business transaction in a journal, which is a book or the electronic equivalent of a book. This leaves transactions in simple chronological order. The information recorded includes the date, amount, description, and two accounts. The accounts are identified by number, and their purpose is to categorize the transaction.

For example, suppose you pay a debt. One account categorizes the transaction according to which debt it is. The other account categorizes the transaction by the source of currency with which you paid it, such as a checking account.

Every journal entry is then copied to a ledger, which is a second book organized not chronologically but by account number. The entry is copied twice, so that it is listed under both account numbers in the ledger.

The OED provides in its sense 2 both an older, generic subsense and a newer, specific subsense.

The generic one is:

a. gen. An intimate relation or connexion.

while the specific one is:

b. spec. An illicit intimacy between a man and a woman.

(Although today, one should probably write that as an illicit intimacy regardless of the sex of the two parties: man and man, man and woman, woman and man, woman and woman.)

However, both debuted in the early 19^th century, so it is probably not right to claim the one the elder use. There is a 17^th century sense related to cooking, and also two more 19^th century senses: one related to phonetics and the other a military term. The military liaison sense in particular is attractive, because there is no sexual overtone there at all.

I think you can sometimes get away with it. It just depends on context.