How to Use Word Association to Generate Ideas

Posted in how to be more creative

You might have played word association games as a kid. You say a word and think of other words that it reminds you of. Or you look at an object and think of all of the words that come to mind.

Word association can be a playful game; it can also help generate ideas.

Word association helps you form new connections and combinations that may lead to exciting and practical ideas.

Let’s give it a try.

In this example, we’re going to practice coming up with a name for my dog ( don’t worry, she does already have a name, so no pressure).

We can look at the dog and think of all of the words that we associate with her to get started. I can then try to take all those ideas and see what kind of names they inspire.

Word association is the practice my husband and I did to come up with her name. When she was a puppy, she looked very much like a bear, and she is a Japanese dog breed, Shiba Inu. So we looked up how to say bear in Japanese. And so her name is Kuma.

Recap:
We thought of all of the words associated with how she looked and what we knew about the breed. We combined ideas from the terms to develop a name.

Practice:

What is a problem you’re trying to solve or an idea you wish you could think of? Start writing down all of the words that you associate with your problem. Then connect and combine them and see what happens.