Adjacent Words

Association definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

ASSOCIA'TION, n.
1. The act of associating; union; connection of persons.
2. Union of persons in a company; a society formed for transacting or carrying on some business for mutual advantage; a partnership. It is often applied to a union of states or a confederacy.
3. Union of things; apposition, as of particles of matter.
4. Union or connection of ideas. An association of ideas is where two or more ideas constantly or naturally follow each other in the mind, so that one almost infallibly produces the other.
5. An exertion or change of some extreme part of the sensory residing in the muscles or organs of sense, in consequence of some antecedent or attendant fibrous contractions.
6. In ecclesiastical affairs, a society of the clergy, consisting of a number of pastors of neighboring churches, united for promoting the interests of religion and the harmony of the churches.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a formal organization of people or groups of people; "he joined the Modern Language Association"
2: the act of consorting with or joining with others; "you cannot be convicted of criminal guilt by association"
3: the state of being connected together as in memory or imagination; "his association of his father with being beaten was too strong to break" [ant: disassociation]
4: the process of bringing ideas or events together in memory or imagination; "conditioning is a form of learning by association" [syn: association, connection, connexion]
5: a social or business relationship; "a valuable financial affiliation"; "he was sorry he had to sever his ties with other members of the team"; "many close associations with England" [syn: affiliation, association, tie, tie-up]
6: a relation resulting from interaction or dependence; "flints were found in association with the prehistoric remains of the bear"; "the host is not always injured by association with a parasite"
7: (chemistry) any process of combination (especially in solution) that depends on relatively weak chemical bonding
8: (ecology) a group of organisms (plants and animals) that live together in a certain geographical region and constitute a community with a few dominant species

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 1535 1. a. the act of associating b. the state of being associated ; combination, relationship 2. an organization of persons having a common interest ; society 3. something linked in memory or imagination with a thing or person 4. the process of forming mental connections or bonds between sensations, ideas, or memories 5. the aggregation of chemical species to form (as with hydrogen bonds) loosely bound complexes 6. a major unit in ecological community organization characterized by essential uniformity and usually by two or more dominant species • associational adjective

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a group of people organized for a joint purpose; a society. 2 the act or an instance of associating. 3 fellowship or companionship. 4 a mental connection between ideas. 5 Chem. a loose aggregation of molecules. 6 Ecol. a group of associated plants. Phrases and idioms: Association Football Brit. football played by sides of 11 with a round ball which may not be handled during play except by the goalkeepers. Derivatives: associational adj. Etymology: F association or med.L associatio (as ASSOCIATE, -ATION)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Association As*so`ci*a"tion (?; 277), n. [Cf. F. association, LL. associatio, fr. L. associare.] 1. The act of associating, or state of being associated; union; connection, whether of persons of things. ``Some . . . bond of association.'' --Hooker. Self-denial is a kind of holy association with God. --Boyle. 2. Mental connection, or that which is mentally linked or associated with a thing. Words . . . must owe their powers association. --Johnson. Why should . . . the holiest words, with all their venerable associations, be profaned? --Coleridge. 3. Union of persons in a company or society for some particular purpose; as, the American Association for the Advancement of Science; a benevolent association. Specifically, as among the Congregationalists, a society, consisting of a number of ministers, generally the pastors of neighboring churches, united for promoting the interests of religion and the harmony of the churches. Association of ideas (Physiol.), the combination or connection of states of mind or their objects with one another, as the result of which one is said to be revived or represented by means of the other. The relations according to which they are thus connected or revived are called the law of association. Prominent among them are reckoned the relations of time and place, and of cause and effect. --Porter.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(associations) Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. An association is an official group of people who have the same job, aim, or interest. ...the British Olympic Association... Research associations are often linked to a particular industry. N-COUNT: oft in names see also housing association 2. Your association with a person or a thing such as an organization is the connection that you have with them. ...the company's six-year association with retailer J.C. Penney Co... = affiliation N-COUNT: usu N with n 3. If something has particular associations for you, it is connected in your mind with a particular memory, idea, or feeling. He has a shelf full of things, each of which has associations for him... N-COUNT: usu pl 4. If you do something in association with someone else, you do it together. PHRASE: PHR n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Union, connection, conjunction, combination. 2. Society, fraternity, partnership, copartnership, sodality, company, band, corporation, body, guild, firm, house, confederacy, confederation, lodge, club, coterie, clique, joint concern.

Moby Thesaurus

Anschluss, British Cabinet, Sanhedrin, US Cabinet, accompaniment, accord, accordance, addition, adjunct, advisory body, affairs, affiliation, affinity, agglomeration, aggregation, agreement, alignment, alliance, amalgamation, approximation, assemblage, assembly, assimilation, association by contiguity, association of ideas, bench, blend, blending, board, body of advisers, bond, bonding, borough council, brain trust, cabal, cabinet, cahoots, camaraderie, camarilla, cartel, centralization, chain of thought, chamber, city council, clang association, closeness, co-working, coaction, coadunation, coalescence, coalition, cochairmanship, coincidence, collaboration, colleagueship, collectivity, collegialism, collegiality, collusion, combination, combine, combined effort, combo, common council, community, companionship, company, complicity, composition, comradeship, concert, concerted action, concomitance, concordance, concourse, concurrence, condominium, confederacy, confederation, conference, confluence, confraternity, congeries, conglomeration, congress, conjugation, conjunction, connectedness, connection, consilience, consociation, consolidation, consortium, consortship, conspiracy, consultative assembly, contiguity, contrariety, contribution, controlled association, cooperation, cooperative, copartnership, copartnery, correspondence, cotenancy, council, council fire, council of ministers, council of state, council of war, county council, court, current of thought, dealings, deduction, deliberative assembly, diet, directory, disjunction, divan, ecumenism, embodiment, encompassment, engagement, enosis, federalization, federation, fellowship, filiation, flow of thought, fraternalism, fraternity, fraternization, free association, freemasonry, friendship, fusion, group, guild, having a part, homology, hookup, identification, inclusion, incorporation, inmost thoughts, integration, intercourse, intimacy, involvement, joining, joint chairmanship, joint control, joint ownership, joint tenancy, junction, junta, kitchen cabinet, league, legislature, liaison, link, linkage, linking, marriage, meld, melding, membership, mental linking, merger, mutual attraction, nearness, negative transference, organization, package, package deal, pairing, parasitism, parish council, partaking, participation, partnership, positive transference, privy council, propinquity, proximity, rapport, relatedness, relation, relations, relationship, saprophytism, secret thoughts, sharing, similarity, simultaneity, social circle, social class, society, sodality, solidification, sorority, soviet, staff, stream of consciousness, suffrage, symbiosis, sympathy, synchronism, syncretism, syndicate, syndication, syneresis, synergy, synesthesia, synod, synthesis, thoughts, tie, tie-in, tie-up, train of thought, transference, tribunal, unification, union, united action, voting, wedding