Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act of joining.
  • noun The state of being joined.
  • noun A joint or simultaneous occurrence; concurrence.
  • noun One resulting from or embodying a union; a combination.
  • noun The part of speech that serves to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences.
  • noun Any of the words belonging to this part of speech, such as and, but, as, and because.
  • noun Astronomy The position of two celestial bodies when they have the same or close to the same celestial longitude, such as the configuration in which a planet or the moon lies along or near a straight line from Earth to or through the sun.
  • noun A compound proposition that has components joined by the word and or its symbol and is true only if both or all the components are true.
  • noun The relationship between the components of a conjunction.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A joining or meeting of individuals or of distinct things; union; connection; combination; association.
  • noun In astronomy, the meeting of two or more stars or planets in the same longitude: as, the conjunction of the moon with the sun, or of Jupiter and Saturn.
  • noun In grammar, a connective particle serving to unite clauses of a sentence, or coördinate words in the same sentence or clause, and indicating their relation to one another.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of conjoining, or the state of being conjoined, united, or associated; union; association; league.
  • noun (Astron.) The meeting of two or more stars or planets in the same degree of the zodiac. See the Note under Aspect, n., 6.
  • noun (Gram.) A connective or connecting word; an indeclinable word which serves to join together sentences, clauses of a sentence, or words.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of joining, or condition of being joined.
  • noun obsolete Sexual intercourse.
  • noun grammar A word used to join other words or phrases together into sentences. The specific conjunction used shows how the two joined parts are related. Example: Bread, butter and cheese.
  • noun astronomy The alignment of two bodies in the solar system such that they have the same longitude when seen from Earth.
  • noun astrology An aspect in which planets are in close proximity to one another.
  • noun logic The proposition resulting from the combination of two or more propositions using the () operator.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun something that joins or connects
  • noun the state of being joined together
  • noun the grammatical relation between linguistic units (words or phrases or clauses) that are connected by a conjunction
  • noun (astronomy) apparent meeting or passing of two or more celestial bodies in the same degree of the zodiac
  • noun the temporal property of two things happening at the same time
  • noun an uninflected function word that serves to conjoin words or phrases or clauses or sentences

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English coniunccioun, from Old French conjunction, conjuncion, from Latin coniūnctiō, coniūnctiōn-, a joining, conjunction (in grammatical sense, translation of Greek sundesmos, binding together, conjunction), from coniūnctus, past participle of coniungere, to join; see conjoin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Via Old French from Latin coniūnctiō ("joining"), from coniungere ("to join").

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Examples

  • The word "conjunction" is also used when the earth, the sun, and one of the other planets are all in the same plane.

    Week in Words 2011

  • My students are amazed – and grateful – to be told that starting a sentence with a conjunction is all right.

    Guerrilla Prescriptivism « Motivated Grammar 2008

  • The idea conveyed by what we call the conjunction "and" is expressed in Chinese by an ideogram, viz. 及, which was originally the picture of a hand, seizing what might be the tail of the coat of a man preceding, _scilicet_ following.

    China and the Chinese Herbert Allen Giles 1890

  • We Are Golf, a new coalition led by four of the game's leading associations and supported by other small businesses, met with key members of Congress last week in conjunction with the third annual National Golf Day.

    On the bag: Now playing, Return to PGA Tour's island 2010

  • This extremely detailed survey from goo Research in conjunction with the NTT DATA Institute of Management Consulting, Inc looked at old people and computer and internet usage, and comparing these habits with that of younger people.

    Japanese senior computer and surfing habits: part 1 of 3 2009

  • Forgive the drive-by (I was following a breadcrumb from j_bluestocking's journal) -- but there may still be a script for Equivocation available through the Tudor Guild, released by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in conjunction with last year's production.

    The Duchess of Malfi deliasherman 2010

  • The first three (conducted in conjunction with the Yomiuri Shimbun) are on Tokyo hotels people want to stay in, foreign cars people want to ride, and favourite coffee shops.

    Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-21 2009

  • For those that have studied the history of wildlife management the success's took place in conjunction with the management of forests not the "let nature work her course" approach.

    Montana To Consider Bill Protecting Fish Habitat and Forest Jobs 2009

  • This extremely detailed survey from goo Research in conjunction with the NTT DATA Institute of Management Consulting, Inc looked at old people and computer and internet usage, and comparing these habits with that of younger people.

    Japanese senior computer and surfing habits: part 2 of 3 2009

  • This extremely detailed survey from goo Research in conjunction with the NTT DATA Institute of Management Consulting, Inc looked at old people and computer and internet usage, and comparing these habits with that of younger people.

    Japanese senior computer and surfing habits: part 2 of 3 2009

Comments

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  • And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.

    January 25, 2007

  • See pregnant pause for another meaning of conjunction!

    July 25, 2008

  • A traditional category discarded by the CGEL, which divides them amongst a few coordinators (and, or, nor, but), a few subordinators (that, if, to, for), and for the most part prepositions (after, before, when, because, despite etc.).

    August 7, 2008