Enjoinment

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of officially directing or commanding someone to do or refrain from something
2. A formal instruction or command given to enforce a rule or law
3. The process of legally or authoritatively requiring an action or forbidding a behavior

Etymology: Enjoinment is a plain, transparent formation: the verb "enjoin" with the noun-forming suffix "-ment" attached. "Enjoin" itself came into English through Anglo-Norman and Old French, where its ancestor carried the sense of joining or binding a person to a course of action, and that sense of formal instruction stayed with it. Adding "-ment" produces a noun for the act or result of enjoining, which in legal use names a formal command or order that a court or authority issues. Because the word is built from familiar parts, its meaning follows directly from them: to enjoin someone is to direct them firmly, and an enjoinment is the directive itself. Its use is largely confined to legal and formal writing, where a command from a court is the kind of thing it names.