Contubernal

Quick meaning: Contubernal is an adjective meaning (rare) Living in close proximity (as though sharing a tent); intimate, familiar.

Meaning

(rare) Living in close proximity (as though sharing a tent); intimate, familiar.

More Meanings

1. (historical) Of a relationship between a male and female slave: sexual in nature and somewhat similar to marriage, but not formalized due to the parties being legally unable to marry.

Example Sentences

[…]the slave system depended on these so-called contubernial relationships to provide a steady supply of new slaves.

Tributes between poets, chess champions, couturiers—and novelists—are always hopefully contubernal. All such donors really yearn for others to see that the honored one lives in a tent they share.

He was equally joyful when after dinner we heard odd noises, which turned out to be a pair of skuas[…]they were the first living things, other than our contubernial companions, that we had seen in the valley.

We make use of the most sacred domestic affections, of maternal, filial, and, I was going to say, connubial love — but the system forbids, and I have to say contubernal — for such rapid and accumulating production of the iniquity[…]

Word Forms

• contubernial

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include inward, near, close-quarter, subcontiguous, intime, immediate.

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