association vs colligation

association

noun
  • Any relationship between two measured quantities that renders them statistically dependent (but not necessarily causal or a correlation). 

  • The state of being associated; a connection to or an affiliation with something. 

  • Relationship between classes of objects that allows one object instance to cause another to perform an action on its behalf. 

  • A benevolent overseas Chinese organization of popular origin for overseas Chinese individuals with the same surname or trade or business. 

  • A group of persons associated for a common purpose; an organization; society. 

  • The act of associating. 

colligation

noun
  • The formulation of a general hypothesis which seeks to connect two or more facts. 

  • A binding together. 

  • The co-occurrence of syntactic categories, usually within a sentence. 

How often have the words association and colligation occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )