Meaning & use
societal
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivebefore a nounformal
Connected with society as a whole, including its structures, values and large groups of people.
Grammar: Comes before a noun: societal change, not change that is societal.
Patterns
- societal change
- societal attitudes
- societal pressure
Rising prices are a societal problem, not only a personal one.
The pandemic caused deep societal change in how people work.
Societal attitudes toward recycling have shifted greatly.
Common combinations
- societal change
- Technology drives rapid societal change.
- societal norms
- Societal norms differ from culture to culture.
- societal pressure
- Young people often feel societal pressure to succeed.
- societal impact
- The study measured the societal impact of the new law.
- societal problem
- Loneliness is a growing societal problem.
Synonyms and how they differ
- social
- Social is far more common and also covers friendly, personal activities, which societal does not.
- communal
- Communal refers to a smaller group sharing things, not society at large.
- collective
- Collective stresses being done or held by a group together, rather than relating to society as a whole.
- public
- Public means open to or concerning everyone, but does not suggest the structures and values of society.
Opposites
Word family
- society noun
- a large group of people living together under shared rules
- social adjective
- relating to people and their relationships
- societally adverb
- in a way that concerns society as a whole
- sociable adjective
- friendly and fond of company
- sociology noun
- the study of society and social behavior
Commonly confused: societal or social? societal or sociable?
societal vs social
Social often describes friendly activities, like a social event, whereas societal is about society's large-scale structure and issues.
societal vs sociable
Sociable describes a friendly person, not a feature of society.
Practice
Experts say that an aging population will have major ____ consequences, from healthcare to housing.
Choose one answer.
Societal is the adjective for effects on society as a whole. Sociable describes a person, and socially is an adverb that cannot modify the noun consequences.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “societal”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.