Learn how to use the verb "Join"
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| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Know Your Verbs! |
| My name is Alisha, and in this episode, we’re going to talk about the verb “join.” |
| Let’s get started! |
| Let’s start with the basic definition of the verb “join.” |
| “To join” means “to participate in an activity with other people.” |
| Some examples… |
| “Do you want to join us for lunch?” |
| “She joined him for a movie.” |
| Okay, now, let’s look at the conjugations for this verb. |
| Present: join, joins |
| Past: joined |
| Past Participle: joined |
| Progressive: joining |
| Now, let’s talk about some additional meanings for this verb. |
| The first additional meaning is “to connect two or more things.” |
| Some examples… |
| “The furniture pieces are joined with screws.” |
| “A high-speed train joins the cities together.” |
| “Join” is used in these sentences to describe fitting two or more things together. This can be physically like closely fitting two things together, closely connecting two things as we see in the first sentence, or it can mean creating a connecting pathway or connecting route as we see in the second example sentence. |
| The first example sentence, “The furniture pieces are joined with screws” shows us how the two pieces are fit together. So, “with screws” shows us that screws are used to connect two things and hold them in place. |
| In the second example sentence, it’s a high-speed train that connects two cities, but we use “joins.” So, a high-speed train joins the cities. It means “connect” in some way. So, “join” can mean physical connection or like a transportation route for connection, some manner of connecting two or more things. |
| The next additional meaning is “to become a member of a group.” |
| Let’s look at some examples… |
| “Do you want to join the army?” |
| “He joined the volunteer group.” |
| So, these sentences show us how join is used to talk about becoming a member of an organization or a group. When you want to use “join” in this way, make sure to name the group or the organization specifically. We don’t tend to use this for schools necessarily. You might become a student at a school and in that case, we use the verb “become a student.” When we’re talking about a specific organization, becoming a member of something, we tend to use “join.” |
| So this use of “join” is interesting. We use it for organizations, for clubs, like we see in the first example, the army, or a volunteer group as we see in the second example sentence, but we do not use this for schools. For example, saying, “Join a cooking school.” It’s something we would not say. We instead use “join” for things that we become a member of. So, when you want to use this meaning, make sure that you’re talking about some kind of, like membership-based organization. You need to enroll or like register yourself to become a member of something. |
| In the first example sentence, it’s “Do you want to join the army?” The army is an organization that you can participate in. You can enroll as a member there. |
| In the second example sentence, it’s a volunteer group. “He joined a volunteer group” shows that he became a member of the volunteer group. |
| So when you want to become a member of an organization, you can use the verb “join” to describe that. |
| The first variation is “to join in.” This means “to participate in a group activity.” |
| This is for an activity that is already happening. It’s something that’s already in progress and a person is invited to participate in that activity. |
| Let’s look at some examples… |
| “Do you want to join in for this round of cards?” |
| “Join in, and help save the environment!” |
| So, this use of “join in” is used for situations where there are groups of people who are already doing some action, some activity. In the first example sentence, it’s a group of people who are playing cards. In the second example sentence, it’s people who are working to help the environment. So, using “join in” is used to indicate an invitation to someone. Someone else is being invited to participate in an ongoing activity. |
| In the second example sentence, we see a very common use of “join in.” It’s used as like a gentle command. “Join in, and help save the environment!” This shows us that there’s someone or some group of people already working to do that thing and they’re inviting other people to participate. |
| So, “join in” is like to participate in an activity that began prior to the conversation. So, “join in” could be a friendly way to make an invitation to someone. |
| The next variation is “to join in marriage,” to join in marriage. |
| “To join in marriage” means to perform a wedding ceremony for two people. |
| Examples… |
| “They were joined in marriage in the summer of 1988.” |
| “They’re searching for an official to join them in marriage.” |
| This is a fairly formal term and we don’t use it very often in everyday conversation. You might see this expression used on perhaps a wedding invitation or maybe in like a newspaper report about someone’s wedding, I suppose. So, to join someone in marriage means to marry those people, to be the official at a wedding ceremony and to perform the ceremony that unites the two people in marriage. You might also hear “to join in matrimony.” Matrimony is the state of being married. So, “to join in marriage” just refers to performing a marriage ceremony. |
| So, those are hopefully a few new ways for you to use the verb “join.” If you have any questions, comments, or want to practice making sentences with this verb, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Know Your Verbs and we’ll see you again soon. Bye! |
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