Englishfor English speakers
association
Noun
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An association is a way that two things are similar, belong together, or are connected or related.
I don't see any association between what happened to you and what happened to me.
I suspect there is an association between the weather and the number who are sick.
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An association is a group of people who have a common goal or interest.
The NBA stands for the "National Basketball Association."
I have been a member of the American Psychological Association and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
All the teachers were at an association meeting.
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Association is the when you associate (spend time with certain people).
I'm afraid your association with those wild people will get you in trouble.
by
Preposition
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near or next to.
The mailbox is by the bus stop.
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at some time before (the given time).
Be back by ten o'clock!
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if something is done by somebody, it is done through their action
The matter was decided by the chairman.
The boat was swamped by the water.
He was protected by his body armour.
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if something is created by somebody, they are the creator, author, etc.
There are many well-known plays by William Shakespeare.
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shows how someone does something
I avoided the guards by moving only when they weren't looking.
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using the rules or logic of.
I sorted the items by category.
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with a change of. In this case, by shows how much something has changed.
Our stock is up by ten percent.
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shows how slowly, or how quickly, someone does something (used in the form "X by X" or "by Xs")
We went through the book page by page.
We crawled forward by inches.
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If you multiply mathx/math by mathy/math, you multiply mathx/math × mathy/math.
Five multiplied by seven is 35.
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If you divide mathx/math by mathy/math, you find how many mathy/maths are in mathx/math.
35 divided by seven is five.
similarity
Noun
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When there is a similarity between things, they are the same in one or more ways.
There is a strong similarity between what happened here and what happened at the other schools.
When you look at two groups of people, there is often more similarity than difference between them.
The Indonesians have a style of music that bears a striking similarity to certain Indian music.