contubernal

English

Alternative forms

• contubernial

Etymology

From Latin contubernālis, from contubernium (“companionship in a tent”), from con- + taberna (“a hut, shed, tent”). More at tavern.

Adjective

contubernal (not comparable)

1. (rare) Living in close proximity (as though sharing a tent); intimate, familiar.
   • 1970, Hortense Calisher, “Mr Nabokov's tent”, in Alfred Appel, Charles Newman, editors, Nabokov: criticism, reminiscences, translations, and tributes, page 345:

     Tributes between poets, chess champions, couturiers—and novelists—are always hopefully contubernal. All such donors really yearn for others to see that the honored one lives in a tent they share.

   • 2016, Colin Bull, “Innocents in the Dry Valleys”, in Dispatches from continent seven: an anthology of Antarctic science, page 204:

     He was equally joyful when after dinner we heard odd noises, which turned out to be a pair of skuas […] they were the first living things, other than our contubernial companions, that we had seen in the valley.

2. (historical) Of a relationship between a male and female slave: sexual in nature and somewhat similar to marriage, but not formalized due to the parties being legally unable to marry.
   • 1814, Joshua Steele, Mitigation of Slavery (part 1), page 155:

     Their contubernal connections are unlimited as to number and local situations, formed and broken off again at pleasure; but the first wife, if still in friendship and confidence of the husband, continues to govern the household, though his appetite may be shared to one, two, or three more.

   • 1858, Thomas R. R. Cobb, An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America, volume 1, page 245:

     § 275. The contract of marriage not being recognized among slaves, of course none of its consequences follow from the contubernial state existing between them. […] As the fact of cohabiting, and living together as man and wife, is universal among slaves, and the privileges of parents over children, in correcting and controlling them, are universally acceded to them, in all trials of slaves for offences committed by them, these relations are recognized by the Courts […]
     § 276. How far this contubernial relation between slaves may be recognized and protected by law, is a question of exceeding nicety and difficulty.

   • 1858, George Barrell Cheever, The sin of slavery, the guilt of the church, and the duty of the ministry. An address delivered before the Abolition Society at New York, on anniversary week, 1858, page 3:

     We make use of the most sacred domestic affections, of maternal, filial, and, I was going to say, connubial love — but the system forbids, and I have to say contubernal — for such rapid and accumulating production of the iniquity […]

   • 1894, M. Mielziner, The institution of slavery among the ancient Hebrews: according to the Bible and Talmud, § 18, page 30:

     Neither a male nor a female slave had the capacity of contracting a valid marriage. If the master permitted a bondman to cohabit with a bondwoman, this connexion was not looked upon as marriage. Hence the master was at liberty to let the same bondwoman afterwards live in a contubernal union with another slave.

   • 2003, Enola G. Aird, “Making the wounded whole: marriage as civil right and civic responsibility”, in Obie Clayton et al., editors, Black fathers in contemporary American society: strengths, weaknesses, and strategies for change, page 157:

     […] the slave system depended on these so-called contubernial relationships to provide a steady supply of new slaves.