Meaning & use
a cohabitant
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Meaning
nouncountableformal
A person who lives with another person as a couple but is not married to them.
Grammar: Countable: one cohabitant, two cohabitants. Often used in legal or official writing about couples living together.
Patterns
- cohabitant with someone
- a cohabitant of someone
Under the new rules, a cohabitant can apply for the same housing benefit as a spouse.
The survey asked each cohabitant how long the couple had lived together.
Her lawyer argued that she had been his cohabitant for over ten years.
Word forms
| plural | cohabitants |
|---|
Common combinations
- a former cohabitant
- A former cohabitant may still have rights to the shared home.
- rights of a cohabitant
- The law sets out the rights of a cohabitant after a separation.
- live as cohabitants
- They have lived as cohabitants since 2018.
- cohabitant partner
- The form asks for the name of your cohabitant partner.
Synonyms and how they differ
- partner
- The everyday word for the person you live with as a couple; cohabitant is more formal and mainly legal.
- live-in partner
- Informal and neutral; cohabitant sounds like official or legal language.
Word family
- cohabit verb
- To live together as a couple without being married.
- cohabitation noun
- The state of living together as a couple without marriage.
Commonly confused: a cohabitant or inhabitant?
a cohabitant vs inhabitant
An inhabitant is someone who lives in a place (a town, a country); a cohabitant is someone you live with as a partner.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'cohabitant' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Cohabitant' means a partner you live with without being married, so option 2 fits. Option 1 confuses it with 'inhabitant' (someone living in a place), option 3 uses it as a verb, and option 4 wrongly applies it to a company.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “a cohabitant”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.