kommende

Kommende is a German term with two main uses. It functions as the attributive form of the present-participial adjective derived from the verb kommen and, in historical contexts, as a noun referring to a church endowment or canonry.

As an adjective, kommend- appears before nouns to mean upcoming or forthcoming. The form kommend is inflected to agree with gender and number, giving examples such as der kommende Mann, die kommende Frau, das kommende Jahr, and die kommenden Wochen. In everyday language it is commonly used in phrases like die kommende Woche or in der kommenden Zeit, where it carries a sense of immediacy or planned future events. In many contexts it is close in meaning to nächsten, though kommend can convey a more formal or scheduled nuance.

In modern usage, kommend is frequent in media, event schedules, and formal writing to describe things that will happen soon. It can be interchangeable with nahestehend or nächste in some contexts, but nuances differ; kommend often emphasizes a defined or announced upcoming period or event rather than a vague near future.

Historically, Kommende (plural Kommenden) is a noun used in ecclesiastical contexts to denote a canonry or prebend—the property and income attached to a clerical office within a collegiate church or monastery. This sense appears in medieval and early modern German texts and is largely found today in historical descriptions rather than contemporary language. The noun sense is distinct from the modern adjectival use and reflects a specialized legal and ecclesiastical vocabulary.

Etymology: kommende derives from the verb kommen; as an attributive adjective it takes the appropriate ending in combination with a following noun. The noun sense traces back to medieval church administration terms, now chiefly of historical interest.