In the early nineteen-sixties, two psychologists, David Palermo and James Jenkins, began amassing a huge table of word associations, the first thoughts that come to mind when people are asked to reflect on a particular word. (They interviewed more than forty-five hundred subjects.) Palermo and Jenkins soon discovered that the vast majority of these associations were utterly predictable.

NEWYORKER: Groupthink

His word-taste associations also help him remember every turn on the way to work.

BBC: News

There should be no negative associations with the word wealth in the context of people having it.

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But she says although she would never use the word fat in her surgery, as it has "childhood playground associations", she thinks talk of banning overweight is "political correctness gone mad".

BBC: Should we stop calling people 'overweight'?