Definition:
The part of speech (or word class) that serves to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences.
The common conjunctions--and, but, for, or, nor, yet, and so--join the elements of a coordinate structure.
A sentence style that employs many coordinate conjunctions is called polysyndeton. A sentence style that omits conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses is called asyndeton.
In contrast to coordinating conjunctions, which connect words, phrases, and clauses of equal rank, subordinating conjunctions connect clauses of unequal rank.
See also:
- "But"--It's a Wonderful Word
- Conjunctive Adverb
- Coordinating Conjunction
- Coordinating Words, Phrases, and Clauses
- Correlative Conjunction
- Disjunction
- Oxford Comma
- Sentence Building With Coordinators
- Subordinating Conjunction
Etymology:
From the Greek, "joining"Examples and Observations:
- "There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody."
(Adlai Stevenson) - "As it happens I am in Death Valley, in a room at the Enterprise Motel and Trailer Park, and it is July, and it is hot. In fact it is 119 degrees. I cannot seem to make the air conditioner work, but there is a small refrigerator, and I can wrap ice cubes in a towel and hold them against the small of my back."
(Joan Didion, "On Morality") - "There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We wish we were Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vadar in all of us."
(Chris Stevens, Northern Exposure) - "I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it."
(E.B. White, "Progress and Change," 1939) - "I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead."
(Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 1934) - Paired Conjunctions (Correlatives)
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
(George Bernard Shaw) - "I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy."
(Marie Curie) - Polysyndeton in Hemingway
"Maybe she would pretend that I was her boy that was killed and we would go in the front door and the porter would take off his cap and I would stop at the concierge's desk and ask for the key and she would stand by the elevator and it would go up very slowly clicking at all the floors and then our floor and the boy would open the door and stand there and she would step out and we would walk down the hall and I would put the key in the door and open it and go in and then take down the telephone and ask them to send a bottle of capri bianca in a silver bucket full of ice and you would hear the ice against the pail coming down the corridor and the boy would knock and I would say leave it outside the door please."
(Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms. Scribner's, 1929)
"[T]he Hemingway sentence is what makes Hemingway. It's not the bullfights or the safaris or the wars. it's a clear, direct, and vigorous sentence. It's the simple connective--the word 'and' that strings together the segments of a long Hemingway sentence. The word 'and' is more important to Hemingway than Africa or Paris."
(Don DeLillo, interview with David Remnick in "Exile on Main Street: Don DeLillo's Undisclosed Underworld." Conversations With Don DeLillo, ed. by Thomas DePietro. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2005) - Conjunction Junction
Backup singers: Conjunction Junction, what's your function?
Main Singer: Hookin' up words and phrases and clauses.
Backup singers: Conjunction Junction, how's that function?
Main Singer: I've got three favorite cars that get most of my job done.
Backup singers: Conjunction Junction, what's their function?
Main Singer: I got and, but, and or. They'll get you pretty far.
("Conjunction Junction," Schoolhouse Rock, 1973) - Conjunctions and Style
"It is the good or bad Use of Conjunction, that constitutes the Essence of a good or bad Stile. They render the Discourse more smooth and fluent. They are the helpmates of Reason in arguing, relating and putting the other Parts of Speech in due order."
(Daniel Duncan, A New English Grammar, 1731) - "A close reasoner and a good writer in general may be known by his pertinent use of connectives. . . . In your modern books, for the most part, the sentences in a page have the same connection with each other that marbles have with a bag; they touch without adhering."
(Samuel T. Coleridge, Table Talk, May 15, 1833)
Pronunciation: cun-JUNK-shun
Also Known As: connective
