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annex

UK/ˈænɛks/US/ˈænɛks/
verbC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,884 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: annexed, annexing, annexes

To annex is to take territory and add it to your own. Annex the region, annexed in 1938, an illegal annexation.

It is not the same as conquest: annexation is the formal claim that the land is now part of the state, which is why other countries respond by refusing to recognise it. As a noun an annexe is a building added to another, and Britain spells that with an e.

Definitions of annex

  1. 1verbannexTo take territory and add it to your own.C2

    “The empire annexed the small neighbouring kingdom after a short war.”

annex is a taking.

Remember it

anNEX → the room NEAR you, taken and added on

The room beside yours belonged to somebody else on Monday. By Friday the wall was open and it was part of your house.

hooks ontonear

Where it comes from

Latin annectere means to bind to — ad, to, plus nectere, to tie. Connect is a relative.

  1. Latin

    annexus

  2. French

    annexe

  3. English, today

    annex

Borrowed from French annexe, from Latin annexus. More at Etymology 2. See also an-.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

annex in the wild

  • The second edition consists of a main part and eight annexes (Annexes A through H).

    ISO 6709

  • Article 17 of the directive sets the terms and standards for reporting on both the habitats and species listed in the annexes by the individual EU member countries.

    Habitats Directive

  • The original building and annex are both at 17 Battery Place.

    Whitehall Building

  • Another 22-story addition at 2 Washington Street, an International Style building located north of the original building and east of the annex, was designed by Morris Lapidus.

    Whitehall Building

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.