Make Your Point: SUBJUGATE

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pronounce SUBJUGATE:

SUB juh gate

connect this word to others:

Whenever you see an English word with "join" or "junct" in it, it's a good bet that it came from Latin: from either iugum, "yoke," or iungere, "to join together."

That's the case with subjugate, literally "to yoke under," and a close relative of words like join, joint, juncture, rejoin, adjoin, conjoin, conjugal ("having to do with marriage"), conjunction, yoke, and j___a ("a group joined together in pursuit of a political goal").

Can you recall that last one? It starts with a J that sounds like H, as in jalapeño, because it passed through Spanish and Portuguese on its way to English.

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)

definition:

Here's a literal yoke:

(Source)

As we've noted before, a figurative yoke is something that forces you down, or forces you to stay attached to something or someone else.

Take the Latin form of "yoke," iugum; then add "sub-," meaning "under," and you get the English word "subjugate:" literally "(to bring) under the yoke."

We've used it since the 1400s to mean "to control, to force down, to conquer, to force into submission." In other words, to subjugate people is to force them to stay under your control.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Verb, the transitive kind: "Vladimir Putin wants to subjugate the people of Ukraine."

Other forms:

The other verb forms are "subjugated" and "subjugating."

The noun for the action is "subjugation," and for the people who control and oppress others, "subjugator(s)."

If you need an adjective, there's "subjugal." It's rare.

how to use it:

Pick the common, very formal word "subjugate" when you want to sound serious as you describe someone who harshly, cruelly, soul-crushingly controls someone else (or some group of people). Or tries to.

Most often, we say that someone subjugates a group of people, a place, or a group or species of animals.

We can also get figurative and talk about subjugating, for example, nature or aspects of nature; free will or free thought; or our own egos, cravings, or desires.

We also talk about being subjugated to others, or to some particular laws, commands, or uses: "Marriage no longer means the wife is subjugated to her husband;" "For millennia, we've subjugated cows to our use."

examples:

"There were new signs on Thursday that Afghan women would resist Taliban attempts to subjugate them. In the western city of Herat, women demonstrated against the possibility of exclusion from a new government, chanting 'Don't be afraid.'"
— Jim Huylebroek, Fahim Abed, Christina Goldbaum, and Rick Gladstone, New York Times, 2 September 2021

"These people had none of the cowed and subjugated air of the citizens who lived above ground. There was a different look in their eyes, a more confident note in their voices, a firmer set to their shoulders. These folk had the air of free men and warriors, not slaves."
— John Murray Reynolds, The Golden Amazons of Venus, 1939

has this page helped you understand "subjugate"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "subjugate" without saying "conquer" or "subdue."

try it out:

In 2016, in the Guardian, Alex Hern joked:

"Google’s long-standing quest to build the robot overlords which will eventually subjugate humanity and usher in a 1,000-year reign of the machines is apparently progressing nicely."

Based on the state of artificial intelligence today, do you think it's still a joke or now a serious possiblity that machines will subjugate humanity? Why or why not?

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month is Slide Into The Title: Elton John Edition!

Have you noticed how pop songs tend to use rhyme, rhythm, and semantics to guide you straight into singing the correct title, even if you’ve never heard it before? I love that, how the title clicks into place. See if you can slide into a complete title, given a snippet of lyrics.

You can check out some examples here.

Try this one today:

"But the change didn't come overnight.
I've been searching for you all my life.
All the habits that I couldn't handle,
I've swept them under the rug.
In exchange for the sweetest addiction,
You, my elusive ____."

To see the answer, scroll all the way down.

review this word:

1. A near opposite of SUBJUGATE is

A. REMIT.
B. ADMIT.
C. SUBMIT.

2. In Pinky and the Brain, in a parody of Calvin Klein's Obsession perfume, Brain advertises Subjugation: "Somewhere beyond passion and obsession... lies subjugation... You will _____."

A. know
B. obey
C. morph

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.

I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.

From my blog:
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A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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