word association

See more synonyms for word association on Thesaurus.com

noun

stimulation of an associative pattern by a word.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Related Words for word association

intuition, meditation

Examples from the Web for word association

Historical Examples of word association

Melroy could hear a recording of somebody being given a word-association test.
Day of the Moron
Henry Beam Piper

British Dictionary definitions for word association

word association

noun

an early method of psychoanalysis in which the patient thinks of the first word that comes into consciousness on hearing a given word. In this way it was claimed that aspects of the unconscious could be revealed before defence mechanisms intervene

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012