contubernial

Adjective

contubernal (not comparable)

1. (rare) Living in close proximity (as though sharing a tent); intimate, familiar.
   • Tributes between poets, chess champions, couturiers—and novelists—are always hopefully contubernal. All such donors really yearn for others to see that the honored one lives in a tent they share.1970, Hortense Calisher, “Mr Nabokov's tent”, in Alfred Appel, Charles Newman, editors, Nabokov: criticism, reminiscences, translations, and tributes, page 345
2. (historical) Of a relationship between a male and female slave: sexual in nature and somewhat similar to marriage, but not formalized due to the parties being legally unable to marry.
   • Their contubernal connections are unlimited as to number and local situations, formed and broken off again at pleasure; but the first wife, if still in friendship and confidence of the husband, continues to govern the household, though his appetite may be shared to one, two, or three more.1814, Joshua Steele, Mitigation of Slavery (part 1), page 155