civil union vs union

civil union

noun
  • A legal union similar to marriage, established to allow same-sex couples (and, in some jurisdictions, opposite-sex couples) rights similar to those married couples have. 

union

noun
  • The act or state of marriage. 

  • An affiliation of several parishes for joint support and management of their poor; also the jointly-owned workhouse. 

  • That which is united, or made one; something formed by a combination or coalition of parts or members; a confederation; a consolidated body; a league. 

  • A data structure that can store any of various types of item, but only one at a time. 

  • The act of uniting or joining two or more things into one. 

  • A trade union; a workers' union. 

  • An association of students at a university for social and/or political purposes; also in some cases a debating body. 

  • A joint or other connection uniting parts of machinery, such as pipes. 

  • The set containing all of the elements of two or more sets. 

  • The state of being united or joined; a state of unity or harmony. 

adj
  • Belonging to, represented by, or otherwise pertaining to a labour union. 

verb
  • To combine sets using the union operation. 

How often have the words civil union and union occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )