Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To live together in a sexual relationship, especially when not legally married.
  • intransitive verb To coexist, as animals of different species.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To dwell together; inhabit or reside in company or in the same place or country.
  • Specifically To dwell or live together as husband and wife: often with reference to persons not legally married, and usually, but not always, implying sexual intercourse.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To inhabit or reside in company, or in the same place or country.
  • intransitive verb To dwell or live together as husband and wife.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb intransitive To reside with another as if married or as a married couple.
  • verb intransitive To coexist in common environs with.
  • verb intransitive, archaic To engage in sexual intercourse; see coition.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb share living quarters; usually said of people who are not married and live together as a couple

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin cohabitāre : Latin co-, co- + Latin habitāre, to dwell; see inhabit.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin cohabitō; co- + habitō ("I dwell, I live in").

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Examples

  • Nkunda, also urged the region's disparate ethnic groups to "cohabit" peacefully.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 2008

  • Gesenius considers this equivalent with "cohabit;" and from this single passage draws the sense which he assigns to [Hebrew: 'iyzebel] This seems rather far-fetched.

    Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 Various

  • All very well for the poor child to make a false step ... or two false steps; but this thing of getting into a 'cohabit' with a monk, and he her uncle, that is a 'hulimination' for the family.

    Caesar or Nothing P��o Baroja 1914

  • Speculation that the Labour peer might "cohabit" uncomfortably with a Tory foreign secretary appears misplaced and Cameron has privately assured Ashton of his support.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • Nkunda, also urged the region's disparate ethnic groups to "cohabit" peacefully.

    Yahoo! News: Top Stories 2008

  • Nkunda, also urged the region's disparate ethnic groups to "cohabit" peacefully.

    Yahoo! News: Top Stories 2008

  • Language is one of those hands, perhaps the most important of all, as language is the medium through which we all experience and engage with the world we cohabit.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • Language is one of those hands, perhaps the most important of all, as language is the medium through which we all experience and engage with the world we cohabit.

    The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

  • Ex-slaves were warned by bureau officials that “the loose ideas which have prevailed among you on this subject must cease,” and that “no race of mankind can be expected to become exalted in the scale of humanity, whose sexes, without any binding obligation, cohabit promiscuously together.”

    A Renegade History of the United States Thaddeus Russell 2010

  • No amount of yogic incantation can harmonize these split personae; the solution is to break the banks into functional units, so that merger experts, market makers and proprietary traders no longer cohabit.

    Robert Teitelman: Goldman Sachs, Business Standards and the Critics Robert Teitelman 2011

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