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say it: uh-soh-see-AY-shuhn
association is a noun meaning "a formal organization of people or groups of people". It carries 8 recorded senses.
a formal organization of people or groups of people
“he joined the Modern Language Association”
the act of consorting with or joining with others
“you cannot be convicted of criminal guilt by association”
the state of being connected together as in memory or imagination
“his association of his father with being beaten was too strong to break”
the process of bringing ideas or events together in memory or imagination
“conditioning is a form of learning by association”
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”
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”
(chemistry) any process of combination (especially in solution) that depends on relatively weak chemical bonding
chemistry
(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
ecology
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for association come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.