English

Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins

Adjective

conjoined ‎(not comparable)

1. Joined together physically, of persons (conjoined twins), or things.
   • 1580s, Ovid, Elegia VI, Book I, translated by Christopher Marlowe, in Christopher Marlowe: The Complete Poems and Translations, Stephen Orgel (ed.), Penguin, 1971, p. 110,

     And farewell cruel posts, rough threshold's block, / And doors conjoined with an hard iron lock!

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 11,

     Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth.

   • 1982, Saul Bellow, The Dean's December, New York: Pocket Books, p. 184,

     Blood vessels are fused to increase circulation and these conjoined or grafted veins and arteries make great painful lumps which have to be soaked daily.

   • 2009, Alex Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy, Edinburgh University Press, Chapter 10, p. 196,

     These 'signatures' (in Arabic ‘alāmāt; singular, ‘alāma) typically consisted of a phrase of up to half a dozen conjoined words written as a monogram in which the reed pen usually maintained contact with the parchment throughout.

2. Joined or bound together; united (in a relationship)
   • 1600, William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV

     If either of you know any inward impediment, why you should not be conjoined, I charge you, on your souls, to utter it.

   • 1935, T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Part II, p. 83,

     O my lord / The glory of whose new state is hidden from us, / Pray for us of your charity; now in the sight of God / Conjoined with all the saints and martyrs gone before you, / Remember us.

   • 1957, "E Pluribus Nigeria" in Time, 3 June, 1957,

     But as representatives of a loosely conjoined nation split in a hundred ways by personal, tribal, religious and economic rivalries and jealousies, no two of them went to the conference agreed on what independence should mean.

3. Combined.
   • 1823, Charles Lamb, "A Quakers' Meeting" in Essays of Elia, New York: The Century Co., 1902, p. 112,

     Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniformity, tranquil and herd-like—as in the pasture—"forty feeding like one."

   • 1871, Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas, Washington, D.C., p. 45,

     I have seen another woman who, from taste and necessity conjoined, has gone into practical affairs, carries on a mechanical business, partly works at it herself, […]

Translations

Usage notes

Conjoint is often used, but conjoined is the preferred usage.

Verb

conjoined

1. simple past tense and past participle of conjoin