Various embodiments are directed to a system and method providing associative matching of terms. Candidate terms are selected for building one or more associative matching models from one or more selected candidate sources. Associativity is defined to give editors the ability to label sample associative term pairs from the one or more candidate sources. The editors label sample candidate term pairs as being related. Features are determined that can differentiate associative from non-associative pairs. The selected features are used to build a model. The model is applied to determine whether a received query-candidate pair are associative.