Hypertext Webster Gateway: "Association"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
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.
From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)
association
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"
4: 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}, {tie}, {tie-up}]
5: the process of bringing ideas or events together in memory
or imagination; "conditioning is a form of learning by
association" [syn: {connection}, {connexion}]
6: a relation resulting from interaction or dependence; "the
host is not always injured by association with a parasite"
7: any process of combination (in solution) that depend 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
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