socijalna

Socijalna is a feminine singular adjective used in several South Slavic languages, including Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Slovenian, to denote relation to society or social matters. It is the form that accompanies feminine nouns, with masculine and neuter forms being socijalni and socijalno, respectively. The word is commonly found in official terminology, policy discourse, and everyday speech to describe aspects that concern social life, welfare, or social policy.

As a linguistic term, socijalna appears in many compound phrases. Examples include socijalna zaštita (social protection), socijalna sigurnost (social security), socijalna pomoć (social assistance), socijalna država or socijalna država (welfare state), and socijalna inkluzija (social inclusion). In sociological and political contexts, it may describe the social dimension of problems, such as socijalna pravda (social justice) or socijalne uslove (social conditions). In academic usage, it is often contrasted with širi pojmovi like drustveni, društvene znanosti or politika, depending on the preferred regulatory or stylistic norms of a language variant.

Etymologically, socijalna derives from the French social or Latin socialis, via Central and Southeast European languages, reflecting its broad adoption in modern administrative and intellectual vocabularies. While the term is widely understood, some contexts prefer drustvena or društveni forms, especially in more formal or traditional usage, where društvena reflects the broader notion of society and social life beyond welfare-specific meanings.