unions

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of union.

   Workers from three different unions packed the meeting hall.

   The treaty bound several smaller unions into one larger federation.

   Note

   A regular plural, but not every meaning of union takes it. The state of harmony is uncountable, so it seldom appears as unions. The countable meanings supply the plural: trade unions, student unions, confederations and leagues, and the joints that connect pipes and machine parts. Several unions almost always means several organizations or several fittings, not several instances of unity.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of union.

   Note

   The verb comes from mathematics: to union sets is to combine them with the union operation, so a sentence like "A unions B" belongs to the language of set theory. Outside that field, join, unite or connect do the work. The pipe fittings that link lines together are covered by the plural noun, not by this verb.

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