ENJOIN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does enjoin mean? 

• ENJOIN (verb)
  The verb ENJOIN has 2 senses:

1. issue an injunction

2. give instructions to or direct somebody to do something with authority

  Familiarity information: ENJOIN used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ENJOIN (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they enjoin    ... he / she / it enjoins   
Past simple: enjoined   
Past participle: enjoined   
-ing form: enjoining   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Issue an injunction

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "enjoin" is one way to...):

disallow; forbid; interdict; nix; prohibit; proscribe; veto (command against)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody PP

Derivation:

enjoining; enjoinment; injunction ((law) a judicial remedy issued in order to prohibit a party from doing or continuing to do a certain activity)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Give instructions to or direct somebody to do something with authority

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

enjoin; order; say; tell

Context example:

The mother told the child to get dressed

Hypernyms (to "enjoin" is one way to...):

request (ask (a person) to do something)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "enjoin"):

direct (command with authority)

instruct (give instructions or directions for some task)

command; require (make someone do something)

call; send for (order, request, or command to come)

warn (ask to go away)

prescribe ((medicine) order the use of (a treatment, medicine, etc.), usually by written prescription)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody to INFINITIVE
Somebody ----s that CLAUSE

Sentence example:

They enjoin him to write the letter

Derivation:

injunction (a formal command or admonition)

 Context examples 

I feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Why had he enjoined me, too, to secrecy?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments, beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their education made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the females were not altogether so robust; and that some rules were given them relating to domestic life, and a smaller compass of learning was enjoined them: for their maxim is, that among peoples of quality, a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Not another word did Mr. Dick utter on the subject; but he made a very telegraph of himself for the next half-hour (to the great disturbance of my aunt's mind), to enjoin inviolable secrecy on me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

At such moments vengeance, that burned within me, died in my heart, and I pursued my path towards the destruction of the dæmon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Temperance, industry, exercise, and cleanliness, are the lessons equally enjoined to the young ones of both sexes: and my master thought it monstrous in us, to give the females a different kind of education from the males, except in some articles of domestic management; whereby, as he truly observed, one half of our natives were good for nothing but bringing children into the world; and to trust the care of our children to such useless animals, he said, was yet a greater instance of brutality.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It was strictly enjoined, that the project of starving you by degrees should be kept a secret; but the sentence of putting out your eyes was entered on the books; none dissenting, except Bolgolam the admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist upon your death, she having borne perpetual malice against you, on account of that infamous and illegal method you took to extinguish the fire in her apartment.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

"Don't mention it," he enjoined me eagerly. "Don't give it another thought, old sport." The familiar expression held no more familiarity than the hand which reassuringly brushed my shoulder. "And don't forget we're going up in the hydroplane tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)