Partnering

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of forming a strategic alliance with another individual or group to work towards shared objectives
2. Engaging in collaborative efforts with one or more parties to accomplish mutual aims and benefits
3. The process of establishing a cooperative link between two or more parties to achieve common goals

Etymology: "Partnering" is the present participle of "partner," and the verb's story runs through a word for inheritance. In Middle English, "partener" and "parcener" meant a joint heir, someone who shared in an estate. That sense descends from Old French "parçonier," built on "parçon," meaning a partition or division, ultimately from Latin "partitio," a portion. So the earliest partners were people dividing up a family inheritance, not people working side by side. The modern sense of working together for shared gain grew out of that idea of holding a share in something. Once you hold a part of an enterprise, you have a stake in how it goes. The form "partner" was also reshaped in Middle English under the influence of "part," which explains why it looks more like that word than like its Latin source. "Parcener" survives as a doublet of the same root, though it is now rare in ordinary English.

Synonyms: collaborating, associating