communal

UK/kəˈmjuː.nəl/US/kəˈmju.nəl/

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,738 of 15,258leans written

Communal means shared by a group rather than owned individually. A communal garden, communal living, communal areas.

In a block of flats the communal areas are the stairs, halls and grounds, and the service charge pays for them. In South Asia, communal has a quite different and grave sense: communal violence means violence between religious communities.

Definitions of communal

1adjectivecommunalShared by a group rather than owned individually.B2+
“The students share a communal kitchen on each floor of the building.”

communal is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin communalis comes from communis, common or shared.

Proto-Indo-European
*mey- (change)
French
communal
English, today
communal

Borrowed from French communal. Borrowed from French communal, from Latin commūnālis, from Latin commūnis. a doublet of cominal.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

communal in the wild

Communal work is a gathering for mutually accomplishing a task or for communal fundraising.
Communal work
The word bee is also sometimes used for other social gatherings without communal work, for example for competitions such as a spelling bee.
Communal work
The centre of many city squares and crescents (especially in London, for example), are maintained as communal gardens.
Communal garden
The qargi was a communal building in which women were usually not permitted.
Qargi
Collective farming and communal farming are various types of agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise.
Collective farming

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

← Vocabulary