associate

adj

1. (not-comparable)Joined with another or others and having lower status.

   “The associate editor is someone who has some experience in editing but not sufficient experience to qualify for a senior post.”

2. (not-comparable)Having partial status or privileges.

   “He is an associate member of the club.”

3. (not-comparable)Following or accompanying; concomitant.
4. (dated, not-comparable)Connected by habit or sympathy.

   “associate motions”

   “These associate ideas are gradually formed into habits of acting together, by frequent repetition, while they are yet separately obedient to the will; as is evident from the difficulty we experience in gaining so exact an idea of the front of St. Paul's church, as to be able to delineate it with accuracy, or in recollecting a poem of a few pages.”

noun

1. A person united with another or others in an act, enterprise, or business; a partner or employee.

   “Allow me to introduce my business associates, Alice and Bob, who are senior VPs for ops and strategy, respectively.”

   “Associates must wash hands before returning to work”

   “The frowning lookes of fiery Tamburlaine, That with his terrour and imperious eies, Commands the hearts of his aſſociates, […]”

2. Somebody with whom one works, coworker, colleague.
3. A companion; a comrade.
4. One that habitually accompanies or is associated with another; an attendant circumstance.
5. A member of an institution or society who is granted only partial status or privileges.
6. One of a pair of elements of an integral domain (or a ring) such that the two elements are divisible by each other (or, equivalently, such that each one can be expressed as the product of the other with a unit).
7. A casual friend, acquaintance
8. (slang)An associate's degree.

verb

1. (intransitive)To join in or form a league, union, or association.
2. (intransitive)To spend time socially; keep company.

   “She associates with her coworkers on weekends.”

   “Before the race he associated only with other skiers.”

   “As a political system democracy seems to me extraordinarily foolish,[…]. My servant is, so far as I am concerned, welcome to as many votes as he can get.[…]I do not suppose that it matters much in reality whether laws are made by dukes or cornerboys, but I like, as far as possible, to associate with gentlemen in private life.”

3. (transitive)To join as a partner, ally, or friend.

   “He associated his name with many environmental causes.”

4. (transitive)To connect or join together; combine.

   “particles of gold associated with other substances”

5. (transitive)To connect evidentially, or in the mind or imagination.

   “I always somehow associate Chatterton with autumn.”

   “He succeeded in associating his name inseparably with some names which will last as long as our language.”

   “A branch of rail transport that seems to been rather neglected by historians is that concerned with cliff railways, of which a fair number exist in Great Britain. This is probably because these lines are overshadowed by the more spectacular funicular railways in Switzerland and other mountainous regions; perhaps, too, because of the general habit of referring to them as "cliff lifts," which tends to associate them with the vertical indoor type.”

   “The economics of rebuilding all the stations covered by the electrification would be prohibitive, but to help bring home to the Glasgow public that their North Clyde suburban service has been transformed, not merely re-equipped with new trains, stations have at least been associated psychologically with the rolling stock by a common colour scheme.”

   “Surprisingly, this analysis revealed that acute exposure to solvent vapors at concentrations below those associated with long-term effects appears to increase the risk of a fatal automobile accident.”

6. (reflexive)To endorse.

   “Mr. President, I rise to associate myself with the remarks of my senior Senator from Louisiana who has led this fight successfully for many years”

7. To be associative.
8. (obsolete, transitive)To accompany; to be in the company of.

   “Friends should associate friends in grief and woe”