Conjugate

13/03/2007

Word of the day: Conjugate

The set up
What it sounds like:
- a little cheeky
- a new age mish-mash of words

What the sound implies:
- to mash, to get together, to put together, to clot.

How I’d use it in a sentence:

  • After applying pressure to the wound for ten minutes, the blood conjugated and I felt better at having minimised blood loss.
  • After a quick ceremony held in a chapel by the resident priest, the prisoner and his new wife were allowed some private time in a separate cell to conjugate their marriage.

Debunked
What conjugate really means:

  1. Grammar.
    a. to inflect (a verb).
    b. to recite or display all or some subsets of the inflected forms of (a verb), in a fixed order: One conjugates the present tense of the verb “be” as “I am, you are, he is, we are, you are, they are.”
  2. to join together, esp. in marriage.
    -verb (used without object)
  3. Biology. to unite; to undergo conjugation.
  4. Grammar. to be characterized by conjugation: The Latin verb esse does not conjugate in the passive voice.
    -adjective
  5. joined together, esp. in a pair or pairs; coupled.
  6. Botany. (of a pinnate leaf) having only one pair of leaflets.
  7. Grammar. (of words) having a common derivation.
  8. Bibliography. (of two leaves in a book) forming one sheet.
  9. Mathematics.
    a. (of two points, lines, etc.) so related as to be interchangeable in the enunciation of certain properties.
    b. (of an element) so related to a second element of a group that there exists a third element of the group that, multiplying one element on the right and the other element on the left, results in equal elements.
    c. (of two complex numbers) differing only in the sign of the imaginary part.
  10. Chemistry.
    a. of or noting two or more liquids in equilibrium with one another.
    b. (of an acid and a base) related by the loss or gain of a proton: NH 3 is a base conjugate to NH4+. NH4+ is an acid conjugate to NH3.
    c. Also, con ju gat ed. (of an organic compound) containing two or more double bonds each separated from the other by a single bond.
    -noun
  11. one of a group of conjugate words.
  12. Mathematics.
    a. either of two conjugate points, lines, etc.
    b. Also called conjugate complex number. either of a pair of complex numbers of the type a + bi and a – bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is imaginary.

Source: Dictionary.com

Verdict:
Wouldn’t use it in a sentence unless I’m trying to raise a couple of cheap laughs (which probably means I’ll try to use it at least twice a day).

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