How to Use associative in a Sentence

associative

adjective

• That’s sort of the associative power, the Pavlov’s Dog that the Right has.
  — Time, 11 June 2019
• It’s the book the movies could use right now, part memoir, part associative rant, and sincerely very fun.
  — Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune, 25 Nov. 2022
• Associative ads don’t make appeal to the features of the products themselves.
  — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 9 May 2017
• All the random word pairings had the strange associative logic of a dream, as though I had been made privy to the Internet’s unconscious.
  — Thomas Beller, The New Yorker, 4 Apr. 2017
• What’s happened is there’s now an assumption that these risk factors are causative rather than associative, says Elovitz.
  — Katie Jennings, Forbes, 17 May 2022
• This is a gorgeous, free-associative (or seemingly so) book, moving in ways both elusive and clear.
  — Bruce Handy, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2018
• Photographs abound, as do match cuts, sound bridges and other forms of associative editing.
  — J. Hoberman, New York Times, 8 Feb. 2018
• The play felt like this declarative dissertation on the world, one that, in all its smarts and scope and lyrical associative logic, came to a grand conclusion.
  — Richard Lawson, Vanities, 26 Mar. 2018
• The book intersperses a selection of Yu’s poems with her essays, arranged in an associative flow that shifts back and forth in time.
  — Washington Post, 29 Sep. 2021
• In the book’s best bits, his broad thesis provides fertile ground for expansive and erudite associative thought.
  — Washington Post, 26 Feb. 2021
• And so this is probably also one reason why dreams are hyper associative, why there are these bizarre elements and scene shifts.
  — Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 24 Aug. 2022
• Berninger talk-sings throughout his solo record, narrating free-associative thoughts from the nostalgic corner of his brain.
  — Washington Post, 14 Oct. 2020
• This phenomenon is a consequence of the associative nature of our brains.
  — Cal Newport, The New Yorker, 21 May 2021
• But a rhythm asserts itself and a structure, musical and associative.
  — Parul Sehgal, New York Times, 3 Sep. 2019
• In Johnson’s quirkily associative mind, the connection to the self-blinding, incestuous King Oedipus would have been as clear as a bell.
  — New York Times, 23 Mar. 2021
• And, one supposes, by a kind of associative property, in Miranda as well.
  — Michael Ordoña Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 27 Jan. 2022
• This Gucci collection was as ‘full of little things’ as always, many of them deeply personal—there’s comfort in the familiar, even for a guy as free associative as Alessandro Michele.
  — Nicole Phelps, Vogue, 25 Feb. 2019
• And the runners with the strongest bias toward associative thoughts tended to be the most efficient, though the pattern wasn’t particularly pronounced.
  — Alex Hutchinson, Outside Online, 23 Sep. 2020
• With Wilco picking and strumming like a string band, Jeff Tweedy spins a free-associative fable about elemental forces of life and death, leading into a brief but probing jam that reunites country and psychedelia.
  — Lindsay Zoladz, New York Times, 7 Dec. 2022
• This effect worked even after the shocks were stopped, indicating that Aplysia formed an associative memory.
  — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 16 May 2018
• The bottles negate rather than support the advertiser’s associative claims.
  — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 9 May 2017
• In person, Kuriki-Olivo is both surprisingly forthcoming and prone to the same associative, idiosyncratic logic that has long been at the center of her work.
  — New York Times, 18 Aug. 2021
• Moreover, the function used to map from one group to another also must preserve the group operations and properties (such as the associative law of addition).
  — Quanta Magazine, 10 Aug. 2021
• Smit also thinks there could be some associative conditioning at play.
  — Conor Feehly, Discover Magazine, 26 July 2022
• The kind of thinking Lamb struggled to do alone was the thinking that spun together the threads of his essays and letters: conversational, allusive, associative.
  — Clare Bucknell, The New York Review of Books, 3 Aug. 2022
• But maybe $5.7 billion lacks concrete associative value so consider that the amount is about equivalent to nine months of Disney's broadcast revenue.
  — Eriq Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 June 2017
• And the plot, with its elaborate weave of suspicion and misdirection, has been distilled into a series of associative montages.
  — Justin Chang, chicagotribune.com, 26 Apr. 2018
• In the title story, adman Bill Whitman — note the surname — dishes a contemplative collage of ex-wives and ex-friends, a resigned and almost free-associative appraisal of his shambled past.
  — William Giraldi, The Seattle Times, 4 Feb. 2018
• However, their conclusion that associative memories can’t survive may not be hold true for all species.
  — Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 26 July 2023
• Adapting an iconic property is always a challenge given the sheer weight of fond, associative memories that the audience has.
  — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 28 Sep. 2023

Last Updated: 22 Dec 2024