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
• In Omen, as in Zombies, Baloji’s associative transitions reward close attention.
  — Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 May 2023
• His research has identified how fan cells, which are found in the lateral entorhinal cortex of the medial temporal lobe and controlled by dopamine, are responsible for receiving new associative memories.
  — Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Discover Magazine, 16 Dec. 2021

Last Updated: 31 Aug 2024