Injunct/Nicht so neues englisches Wort

Following my discovery of insoweitig, I was excited to encounter the verb injunct, which was new to me, in a lawyer’s article for the law section of the Times, I think (no, it was in the Law Society Gazette) – but when searching, I found only this comment:

“injunct”? Whatever happened to “enjoin”? Are lawyers, whose profession is based on purported precision of language, becoming so ill-educated that they are ignorant of the root verb of “injunction”?

Since an injunction (einstweilige Verfügung, gerichtliche Anordnung) can order you to stop doing something, or to start doing something, I wondered how to use the verb in a sentence.

But it appears from the Oxford English Dictionary that injunct has been around for a while. Definition: ‘To prohibit or restrain by injunction. Now in somewhat more general use’. First example, 1872, also 1887 – both U.S. Then 1890 in the UK.

Ghits indicate a common use: ‘to injunct publication’, for example in the Law Society Gazette article mentioned:

The Formula One boss had ­previously lost his application to injunct the ­publication of details, photographs and video footage of his sexual activities because by the time he got to court 435,000 hits had been made on the online version of the article, and the video footage had been viewed approximately 1,424,959 times

The verb enjoin seems much harder to use. ‘Enjoin publication’ can be found, in legal texts, in the sense of preventing publication. But it can also mean the opposite: ‘To prescribe authoritatively and with emphasis (an action, a course of conduct, state of feeling, etc.)’, says the OED, meaning 2, whereas meaning 3 ‘To prohibit, forbid (a thing); to prohibit (a person) from (a person or thing)’ is ‘Now only in Law’.

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