Communual

Communual is an adjective used to describe things relating to a community or to the sharing and management of resources by a community. It is a less common variant of communal, and in modern usage the form communal is typically preferred. When communual appears, it is usually in older texts, scholarly writing, or contexts that emphasize collective ownership or governance within a specific community or commune.

Etymology and sense: Communual derives from the same Latin roots as communal, from communis meaning shared or common, through Old French and into English. The distinction between communual and communal is largely historical or stylistic; the meaning overlaps, but communal is the standard, everyday term.

Usage: In contemporary English, communual is rarely used outside specialized or historical discourse. It may appear in phrases such as communual property, communual decision-making, or communual spaces to stress collective rights, duties, or use by members of a community. In many cases, writers use communal instead, reserving communual for particular scholarly or regional usages.

Examples: A study of a rural commune might discuss its communual administration, though more often the term communal administration would be used. In legal or anthropological texts, communual rights or communual ownership may appear to indicate rights held by a community rather than individuals.

See also: communal, community, commune, commons, cooperative, communalism.