félagslegum

félagslegum is a form of the Icelandic adjective félagslegur, meaning social or societal. The word is used to describe things that pertain to society, social life, or the relations within a community. In Icelandic, adjectives decline to agree with the gender, number, and case of the nouns they modify, so félagslegur can appear in different inflected forms depending on the noun. félagslegum is most commonly encountered as a dative form, and it appears in phrases where the noun it modifies is in the dative case, such as in set phrases and in certain constructions found in formal or written Icelandic.

Etymology and form: the base is félag, meaning society or fellowship, combined with the adjectival suffix -legur to yield félagslegur, “social.” The inflected form félagslegum arises through Icelandic declension rules for adjectives, which require agreement with the noun in case. The result is a form that signals that the described noun is in a grammatical context such as the dative.

Usage: félagslegur and its inflected forms are widely used in both everyday language and scholarly writing to discuss aspects of society, social policy, and human relations. Common phrases include descriptions of social structures, rights, and services, for example in discussions of félagslegar aðstæður (social conditions) or félagsleg forsendur (social grounds). The term is central to fields such as sociology (félagsfræði) and political or economic discourse that address society-wide phenomena.

In sum, félagslegum represents a specific grammatical form of the broader concept of “social,” employed to fit Icelandic syntax and to discuss social matters in a precise, formally correct way.