A luxurious choice today between ease and leisure—both are pleasant states of being free from physical or mental burdens and demands. Ease suggests physical comfort and relaxation, as well as freedom from labor or other exertion (took his ease on the couch after dinner; the calamine lotion brought me ease). We enjoy periods of ease whenever we can; leisure, on the other hand, is often something granted to employees by their employers—the word comes from a Latin verb meaning “to allow.” Leisure suggests freedom from work or other duty, allowing rest or recreation (has a lot of leisure  time; traveling for business, not leisure). It’s no wonder many people dream of a life of leisure, but leisure has financial benefits, too: it’s often written about as an industry and linked with hospitality, sports, tourism, and entertainment.

Gather has many definitions stemming from its oldest sense of bringing a number of people or things together in one place: for example, it can mean to pick or harvest (gather crops), to collect or select from a number of things (gather evidence or intelligence), or to conclude or infer (I gathered his car had broken down). Glean overlaps with gather at more than one point. Originating as a term for collecting the bits left of a crop after the regular harvest is over, glean in its figurative meaning implies slow or laborious gathering of information or insight, sometimes by scraping together bits from various sources (glean wisdom from their own experience, gleaning insights from big data).

These two adjectives are used of things related to marriage. Matrimonial is derived from the noun “matrimony,” which appears in the Christian phrasing used by ministers to formally unite two people “in holy matrimony.” Thus, matrimonial can evoke the solemnity of the religious sacrament of marriage, but also the duties and obligations of marriage as a legal contract. It is most commonly used in a legal context, as in matrimonial law or property, although you will occasionally see matrimonial bliss. Connubial is an elevated word, and less familiar, but at heart also less starchy. Its most frequent use by far is in the phrase connubial bliss, and it is used to describe the human experience of actual married life, with its potential for connubial affection, fervor, and joy.