Dictionary

connexion en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /kəˈnɛkʃən/

Etymology

From Middle English connexioun, from Latin connexiō (“a conclusion, binding together”), from connectō.

Meanings

1. (UK, countable, uncountable) Dated spelling of connection.
   • I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons; because her rank and connexions suited him; […] 1848, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography:
   • In this connexion, it is worth remembering that we are never told how the tribute was collected within the tributary state. 1978, Moses I. Finley, “The fifth-century Athenian empire: A balance sheet”, in Peter D. A. Garnsey, C. R. Whittaker, editors, Imperialism in the Ancient World: The Cambridge University Research Seminar in Ancient History, Cambridge University Press (reprinted 2006), →ISBN, page 125:
   • “Connexion” is the etymological (ie, “correct”) spelling. That is to say, our word is derived from an actual Latin noun, cf. deflexion, inflexion, and reflexion. […] And it might make life easier to abolish the letter “x”. But why should we cut off the fascinating roots of our words? I should carry on preferring “connexion”. [2005 April 11, Philip Howard, “Modern Manners”, in The Times, London: News UK, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 17 Apr 2026:
   • And about this harpooneer, whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and exasperating stories, tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards the man whom you design for my bedfellow–a sort of connexion, landlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick:
   • It is now time for the opposition to the Annexation of Texas to cease, all further agitation of the waters of bitterness and strife, at least in connexion with this question,–even though it may perhaps be required of us as a necessary condition of the freedom of our institutions, that we must live on for ever in a state of unpausing struggle and excitement upon some subject of party division or other. 1845 July and August, John O’Sullivan, “Annexation”, in United States Magazine and Democratic Review, volume 17, number 1, archived from the original on 04 Jul 2024, page 1:
   • Persuading the widow that my connexion with her husband's 'technical matters' was sufficient to entitle me to his manuscript, I bore the document away and […] 1928 February, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume XI, number 2, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, →OCLC:
   • There are undoubtedly facts, which, may come to their knowledge by means of their connexion with the ſecretary of ſtate, reſpecting which they cannot anſwer. 1803 February 14, John Marshall, quotee, “Marbury v. Madiſon”, in U.S. Reports, volume 5, Washington, D.C.: William Cranch, archived from the original on 30 Apr 2024, pages 141–142:
   • All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion […] such talk had been distressingly out of place. 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
   • It resembled them in the sense that it was not ended, when it was past, but continued to unfold, in Watt's head, from beginning to end, over and over again, the complex connexions of its lights and shadows, the passing from silence to sound and from sound to silence, the stillness before the movement and the stillness after, the quickenings and retardings, the approaches and the separations, all the shifting detail of its march and ordinance, according to the irrevocable caprice of its taking place. 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC:
2. (countable, qualifier:Methodism, uncountable) A Methodist denomination as a whole, as opposed to its constituent churches, circuits, districts and conferences (US spelling: connection).
3. (countable, historical, uncountable) The inter-relationship of prayer groups or religious societies under the oversight of an itinerant preacher who is assisted by the local preachers attached to each society.

Forms

Deriveds

connexional · interconnexion · disconnexion · New Connexion · reconnexion