unconjugated
- adjective
- /ˌʌnˈkɒndʒʊɡeɪtɪd/
- Specialized
- Chemists often refer to unconjugated compounds when discussing their fundamental properties before they react with other substances.
Examples
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In many cases, an unconjugated verb remains unchanged regardless of the subject or tense.
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The unconjugated form of the verb allows learners to understand its basic meaning without any changes for past, present, or future.
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Together with the impersonality of all these unconjugated verbs, moreover, the uniform, repetitive syntax gives this itemized list of activities the air of an expense report.
Academic text (1998)
Synonyms
Not changed in form to show time, amount, or part in a sentence
Not changed in form to show tense, number, or case
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
unconjugated = conjugated (transparent) = un + conjugate + ed
The adjective 'conjugated' is simply negated by the productive prefix 'un-', yielding 'not conjugated'.
Etymology
Unconjugated is built from un- 'not' and conjugate, a word that meant 'to join', like the simple English verb 'join'. So unconjugated means 'not joined', which helps: a verb is unconjugated when it is not changed with endings, and a chemical is unconjugated when it is not joined to another substance.