Associative Meaning

One fun thing about words is that they can have one meaning by themselves, then a different meaning when combined with another word.

Consider the words Wash and Bag. Together they are a wash bag. Simple enough. Separate and alone, they each have a multitude of meanings.

A fun and valuable exercise (for your brain), is to take a single word and see how many associated meanings you can think up containing the word.

If you started with Wash, you might get: Car wash, face wash, dish wash, washout, dog wash, acid wash, hogwash, white wash, and George Wash…ington.

There aren’t any limits to this. The point is to see how the meanings change as the one word is connected to others.

If you did Bag, you might get: Bag of holding, doggy bag/doggie bag, sandwich bag, trash bag, vacuum bag, bag o’ donuts, kick bag, punching bag, sleeping bag, tool bag, overnight bag, and bag of tricks.

The best example here is doggy bag versus doggie bag. The separate meaning of each would let you know if you should eat out of that particular bag, or not.

Here are a few words for you to try: Head—Glass—Tank—Act—Foot—Car—Net—Book.

Pick any one of these, or have fun trying all of them.