association

Etymology

From Latin associātiō, from associō (perhaps via French association). Morphologically associate + -ion The Philippine sense is a calque of Spanish gremio.

noun

1. (uncountable) The 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. (countable) The state of being associated; a connection to or an affiliation with something.
   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, page 164
3. (statistics) Any relationship between two measured quantities that renders them statistically dependent (but not necessarily causal or a correlation).
4. A group of persons associated for a common purpose; an organization; society.
5. (object-oriented programming) Relationship between classes of objects that allows one object instance to cause another to perform an action on its behalf.
6. (Philippines, Chinese Filipino) A benevolent overseas Chinese organization of popular origin for overseas Chinese individuals with the same surname or trade or business.
   (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia)