Word.ws English Dictionary

commonweal

/ˌkɒmənˈwiːl/

commonweal noun: the common good; public wellbeing or prosperity.

Noun

commonweal (plural commonweals)

  1. (archaic) The common good; public wellbeing or prosperity.
    • He had to judge the people as justice Errant […]; to equip his milites, send them duly in war-time to the King; — strive every way that the Commonweal, in his quarter of it, take no damage.1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. XIII, In Parliament”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk)
    • He [David Gelernter] yearns for the days when people, for reasons of the commonweal, did what they were told.1995 May 21, Steven Levy, “The Unabomber and David Gelernter”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    res publica
  2. The body politic; republic.
    • […] hit semeth that men haue ben longe abused in calling Rempublica a commune weale. And they which do suppose it so to be called for that, that euery thinge shulde be to all men in commune without discrepance of any astate or condition, be ther to moued more by sensualite, than by any good reason...1531, Thomas Elyot, chapter I, in The Boke Named the Governour […], London: […] Tho[mas] Bertheleti, →OCLC

Synonyms of commonweal

Forms of commonweal

pluralcommonweals
alternative formcommon weal

Origin of commonweal

From Middle English comun wele, commen wele, comune wele, equivalent to common (“public”) + weal (“well-being”). By the 1520s used by some authors as the equivalent of res publica (republic), alongside commonwealth from about the same time.

Words formed from commonweal

Questions about commonweal

What does commonweal mean?
Commonweal means the common good; public wellbeing or prosperity.
What part of speech is commonweal?
Commonweal is a noun.
How do you pronounce commonweal?
Commonweal is pronounced /ˌkɒmənˈwiːl/.
What is the plural of commonweal?
The plural of commonweal is commonweals.

Words near commonweal in the dictionary

  1. commonsensical
  2. commonsensically
  3. commonship
  4. commonships
  5. commonty
  6. commonweal
  7. commonweals
  8. commonwealth
  9. Commonwealth Caribbean
  10. Commonwealth Day
  11. Commonwealth English

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: commonweal (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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