association

plural associations

1. uncountableThe act of associating.

   And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.

   1970, Aristotle, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Politics, page I.2,1253a15-20

2. countableThe state of being associated; a connection to or an affiliation with something.

   "Well," exclaimed Lady Marchmont, breathing the perfume with which a honeysuckle, wound around an old ash, filled the air, "I do confess that I like common flowers better than any. The hothouse plant has no associations."

   1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Fête at Sir Robert Walpole’s Continued”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 39

   1 more example

   Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?

   2012 March-April, Jan Sapp, “Race Finished”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, archived from the original on 05 Sep 2015, page 164

3. countableuncountablemathematicsAny relationship between two measured quantities that renders them statistically dependent (but not necessarily causal or a correlation).
4. countableuncountableA group of persons associated for a common purpose; an organization; society.
5. countableuncountableobject-oriented programmingRelationship between classes of objects that allows one object instance to cause another to perform an action on its behalf.
6. PhilippinescountableuncountableChinese FilipinoA benevolent overseas Chinese organization of popular origin for overseas Chinese individuals with the same surname, geographical origin, location, trade or business.

   Synonyms: kongsi