This article includes a list of references or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations. An affair may refer to a form of nonmonogamy, to infidelity or to adultery. Where an affair lacks both overt and covert sexual behaviour and yet exhibits intense or enduring emotional intimacy it is called an emotional affair. 'Affair' may be used as a euphemism and in some cases to add glamour to an illicit liaison or it may be used to slander. Affair has the same word origins as affect — an affair implies bonds of affection, but not necessarily so. Some affairs are premeditatively cold, exploitative or designed to extract information or to provide the basis for later blackmail or grounds for divorce. In the most general sense, affair may be used to connote professional, personal, or public business. These include meetings or other functions, or tasks that need to be completed. For example, one might say, "I have other affairs to attend to at the moment." It may also refer to a particular business or private activity, as in family affair or private affair. An affair, in the political sense, typically refers to any kind of involvement in illicit business by any kind of public representatives, such as in the Watergate affair. Like the earlier definition this is not always the case — for example the British Government has a Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, which is a perfectly legitimate (and usually honorable) position.