Adjunct means something added on, but not part of the whole. An adjunct professor is someone who is hired by a college to teach but isn't a full member of the faculty. This is a word you can figure out by taking it apart. From ad- to and -junct join (think junction), you can see that this is about joining something to another. During lunch, Tim always sat the girls' lacrosse-team lunch table, and they joked that he was an adjunct member of the team.. Definitions of adjunct.