Syndication is the business of selling the same piece of content to many different buyers at once, so it appears in lots of places. A cartoonist draws one comic strip, and a syndication agency sells it to two hundred newspapers; a columnist writes one article that runs in papers all over the country. The word is strongest in media. In American television it has a very particular meaning: after a show has finished its first run on one network, the episodes are sold to lots of local stations to repeat — a show 'goes into syndication', which is where the real money often is. On the internet, syndication also means feeding your content out to other sites automatically; the 'S' in RSS stands for syndication. There is a second, quite separate use in finance: syndication is when several banks join together to lend money for one very large loan, sharing the risk. The verb is 'syndicate' (a syndicated column, a syndicated show), and the meaning is always the same shape — one thing, many outlets. It is a workplace and industry word, neutral in tone, not something you would say to a friend.