Meaning & use
conjugal status
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Meaning
noununcountableformallegal
The official position of a person as married, single, divorced, or widowed, especially in legal or official contexts.
Grammar: Usually uncountable and used without 'a' or 'the' when talking about this legal condition; it can take 'the' when referring to a specific person's status.
Patterns
- someone's conjugal status
- change your conjugal status
- state your conjugal status
The form asks applicants to indicate their conjugal status.
After the divorce, she had to update her conjugal status in several official records.
In some countries, conjugal status affects how much tax you pay.
Common combinations
- marital status
- Please write your marital status on the line provided.
- change your conjugal status
- Getting married will change your conjugal status.
- conjugal rights
- The law once gave husbands certain conjugal rights over their wives.
- conjugal visit
- The prison allows conjugal visits for married inmates.
Synonyms and how they differ
- marital status
- This is the everyday term and is much more common than conjugal status.
- civil status
- Civil status is broader and can include things like citizenship, not just marriage.
Word family
- conjugal adjective
- Relating to marriage.
- conjugality noun
- The state of being married; rare.
Commonly confused: conjugal status or conjugal?
conjugal status vs conjugal
Conjugal is an adjective meaning 'relating to marriage'; conjugal status is the noun phrase for the official category.
Practice
On the official form, please indicate your ______ status.
Choose one answer.
Conjugal status is the fixed legal phrase for marital status. Conjunction means a word that connects clauses, connubial is a poetic word for married life, and conjugated refers to verb forms.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “conjugal status”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.