association
Pluralassociations
- 1A group of people organized for a common purpose, such as a trade body, club, or society.
The trade association lobbies on behalf of small business owners.
Players formed an association to negotiate better contracts with the league.
UsageYou join or form an association; it is an association of its members or for a purpose (an association of local artists).
- 2A connection or relationship with someone or something, or the act of joining or connecting with others.
Her long association with the company spanned three decades.
The club denied any association with the controversial group.
UsageAn association with someone or something (her association with the company); in association with means working together with.
Similarconnection, link
Note
In the plural it often slides into the mental meaning: the memories and feelings a thing calls up. Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Lady Marchmont prefers common flowers because "the hothouse plant has no associations," and Jan Sapp writes in American Scientist (2012) that race conjures "a mixture of associations."
- 3A connection formed in the mind between two things, or the memory, idea or feeling that something calls up.
Advertisers work hard to build an association between their brand and a feeling of freedom.
The hospital smell carried painful associations for her long after her treatment ended.
UsageOften plural: a thing has or carries associations for someone; the mind makes an association between two things or with something.
Similarlink, connotation
- 4In statistics, the dependence of two measured variables on each other, which need not involve cause and effect and need not take the form of a correlation.
The study reported a strong association between income and life expectancy.
The study found a strong association between screen time and poor sleep, but it could not show that one caused the other.
UsageUsually an association between one measure and another; a study finds or reports one.
Similarrelationship
Note
A statistician's word for dependence of any kind: two measured quantities are associated when knowing one tells you something about the other. It is wider than correlation, which usually means a linear trend, and it makes no claim about cause. When a study reports an association between two variables, the careful reading is that they vary together, not that one drives the other.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Statistical association encompasses statistical dependence generally. dept.stat.lsa.umich.edu
- Associated variables provide information about each other. stat.berkeley.edu
- Pearson correlation measures linear association. Correlation also includes rank correlations, such as Spearman correlation, that can measure nonlinear monotonic relationships. itl.nist.gov
- An association alone does not establish causation. stat.berkeley.edu
Less common meaning
- 5In object-oriented programming, a link between two classes through which an instance of one can have an instance of the other carry out an action for it.
Practice
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Origin
Latin associātiō, a noun built on the verb associō, is the source, perhaps passed on by French association; in form it is associate + -ion.