Meaning & use
non-consensual
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivenot comparablelegal
Done without the agreement or permission of the person or people it affects.
Grammar: Not usually graded: an act is or is not non-consensual, with no 'more' or 'very'.
Patterns
- non-consensual contact
- non-consensual sharing of something
Sharing private photos without permission is non-consensual and may be a crime.
The study banned any non-consensual collection of personal data.
Non-consensual medical treatment violates patient rights.
Common combinations
- non-consensual sharing
- The law now covers non-consensual sharing of images.
- non-consensual data collection
- Regulators fined the firm for non-consensual data collection.
- non-consensual contact
- The policy forbids non-consensual contact between players.
- non-consensual experiment
- Non-consensual experiments on patients are now illegal.
- non-consensual act
- A non-consensual act can lead to prosecution.
Synonyms and how they differ
- unauthorised
- Unauthorised means done without official permission, while non-consensual emphasises lack of personal agreement.
- involuntary
- Involuntary describes something not chosen, often a reflex, and does not suggest someone else imposed it.
- coerced
- Coerced says someone was pressured, whereas non-consensual only says agreement was absent.
- unwanted
- Unwanted describes feeling, while non-consensual describes lack of agreement.
Opposites
Word family
- consent noun
- permission or agreement
- consensual adjective
- done with the agreement of everyone involved
- consent verb
- to agree to something
- consensus noun
- general agreement within a group
Commonly confused: non-consensual or consensus?
non-consensual vs consensus
Consensus is agreement within a group; consensual and non-consensual refer to personal consent.
Practice
A journalist wrote that the app's collection of location data was ___ because users were never asked.
Choose one answer.
Non-consensual means done without agreement. Non-essential is tempting but means not necessary, not lacking permission.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “non-consensual”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.