# association

Pronunciation: say "uh-soh-shee-AY-shuhn" US /əˌsoʊʃiˈeɪʃən/, UK /əˌsəʊʃiˈeɪʃn̩/

## Noun

1. A group of people organized for a common purpose, such as a trade body, club, or society.
   - Simple: A group of people who join together because they share an interest, a job, or a goal.
   - _The trade association lobbies on behalf of small business owners._
   - _Players formed an association to negotiate better contracts with the league._
2. A connection or relationship with someone or something, or the act of joining or connecting with others.
   - Simple: A connection or relationship between people, groups, or things, or the act of joining together with others.
   - _Her long association with the company spanned three decades._
   - _The club denied any association with the controversial group._
3. A connection formed in the mind between two things, or the memory, idea or feeling that something calls up.
   - Simple: A link your mind makes between two things, or a thought or feeling that something makes you have.
   - _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._
4. In 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.
   - Simple: A connection between two measured things, where they tend to change together but may not cause each other.
   - _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._

## Other meanings

- (noun) In 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.

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/association (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).