«تَقَارُنٌ فِي الْخَيَالِ سَابِقٌ عَلَى الْعَطْفِ»
An association within imagination that precedes coordination.
Mentioning two things together does not by itself prove that there was already an imaginative jāmiʿ. The relevant link should be present sufficiently beforehand to let one image evoke another for the audience.
In this account imaginative association is a ground for the conjunction, not a relation automatically created merely because the conjunction was uttered.