adjunct

American  

[aj-uhngkt] / ˈædʒ ʌŋkt /

noun

• adjuncts
  plural

1. something added to another thing but not essential to it.

   Synonyms:

   supplement, appendix

2. a person associated with lesser status, rank, authority, etc., in some duty or service; assistant.

   Synonyms:

   attaché, aide

3. a person working at an institution, as a college or university, without having full or permanent status.

   My lawyer works two nights a week as an adjunct, teaching business law at the college.

4. Grammar. a modifying form, word, or phrase depending on some other form, word, or phrase, especially an element of clause structure with adverbial function.

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adjective

1. joined or associated, especially in an auxiliary or subordinate relationship.

2. attached or belonging without full or permanent status.

   an adjunct surgeon on the hospital staff.

adjunct British  

/ ˈædʒʌŋkt /

noun

1. something incidental or not essential that is added to something else

2. a person who is subordinate to another

3. grammar

   1. part of a sentence other than the subject or the predicate

   2. (in systemic grammar) part of a sentence other than the subject, predicator, object, or complement; usually a prepositional or adverbial group

   3. part of a sentence that may be omitted without making the sentence ungrammatical; a modifier

4. logic another name for accident

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adjective

1. added or connected in a secondary or subordinate position; auxiliary

Synonym Usage

See addition.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• adjunctive
  adjective
• adjunctly
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• adjuncts
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of adjunct

1580–90; < Latin adjunctus joined to (past participle of adjungere ), equivalent to ad- ad- + jung- (nasal variant of jug- yoke ¹ ) + -tus past participle suffix

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Explanation

Adjunct means something added on, but not part of the whole. An adjunct professor is someone who is hired by a college to teach but isn't a full member of the faculty. This is a word you can figure out by taking it apart. From ad- "to" and -junct "join" (think "junction"), you can see that this is about joining something to another. "During lunch, Tim always sat at the girls' lacrosse-team lunch table, and they joked that he was an adjunct member of the team."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

adjunct adjuncts

The limits “cannot be clearly explained by differences in real or perceived quality in the instruction of full-time or adjunct faculty,” wrote Woodward, the department’s third-ranking official.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026

She spent six years as an adjunct professor teaching criminal procedure and litigation at Southwestern Law School.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 1, 2026

Bring a little forgiveness to the picture, says Celeste Birkhofer, a clinical psychologist and adjunct clinical faculty member at Stanford Medical School who emphasizes grief counseling.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 24, 2026

Schiffman was the study's corresponding author and an adjunct professor in the joint department of biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 14, 2026

He is looking for an adjunct position, teaching German part-time.

From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri

She noted that 40% of faculty nationally are adjuncts, like many of those in the crowd, with lower pay, fewer benefits and less job security than tenured faculty.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026

"Healthy dietary and lifestyle practices should remain the foundation for obesity treatment and management, with medications such as GLP-1 receptor agonists used as adjuncts."

From Science Daily ● Jan. 28, 2026

Administrators rely too heavily on student reviews when deciding whether to retain adjuncts, assistant professors and even associates.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 23, 2025

The medical school’s full-time faculty numbers more than 2,000, with an additional 2,000 to 2,500 part-timers or adjuncts.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2024

I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his magic clue, brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to that refreshment, but of tea not a glimpse.

From "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

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