Other forms: joined, joining, joins
To join is to become a member of a group, or to connect two things together. Join a club, join the queue, join two pipes, join us for lunch.
The everyday uses split neatly. With an organisation or a group there is no preposition: join the army, join a gym. With a person there is: join somebody for dinner, join in the game. Join up is British for enlisting in the armed forces, and join in means take part in an activity already going on — which is one of the friendliest phrasal verbs in the language. The noun is a join, meaning the visible place where two things meet, and a good one is invisible.
1verbjoinTo become a member of a group or organisation.~70%
“She joined the choir in September.”
synonyms: enrol, sign up
2verbconnectTo connect two things together.~13%
“Join the two halves with glue and leave them overnight.”
synonyms: connect, fasten, unite
3verbtakeTo come together with somebody, or take part with them.~13%
“Will you join us for supper?”
4nounplaceThe place where two things are joined.~4%
“You can just see the join if you look closely.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 25 sentences found in the wild and placed 23 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
join is a way of connecting.
Latin iungere, to join or yoke, comes from a Proto-Indo-European root *yewg- that also gives yoga and yoke — the joining of two oxen and the joining of body and mind named by the same ancient word.
Proto-Indo-European
*yewg- — to join, unite
Latin
iungō — join, yoke
Old French
joindre
Middle English
joinen
English, today
join
From Middle English joinen, joynen, joignen, from Old French joindre, juindre, jungre, from Latin iungō (“join, yoke”), from Proto-Indo-European yewg- (“to join, unite”). Cognate with Old English iucian, iugian, ġeocian, ġyċċan (“to join; yoke”). More at yoke.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA