I heard a landscape designer on an HGTV program refer to “creating a linkage” between a home and a potting shed.

Problem:
These two nouns are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The landscape designer was referring simply to installing a paved path between the home and the shed. In other words, the path would connect the shed with the home.

When I heard the designer call the path itself a “linkage”, I wondered whether this was the appropriate noun and looked up “linkage” and “link” in a dictionary.

The noun “link” essentially means anything that connects two people, places, or things.

The noun “linkage” essentially means one of the following:

• the act of linking — as in “The CIA’s linkage of the two spies took three years.”;
• a system of links — as in “There is a complex linkage between the fertilizer that one puts on a lawn and the chemicals in the water that can be extracted from an underground aquifer.”

I believe that some people use “linkage” when the noun “link” is appropriate because they want to sound more educated — and perhaps charge more for their services!

Solution:
Use “link” when referring to a connection between two people, places, or things. Use “linkage” when referring to the act of creating links or when referring to a system of links.