Verb (third-person singular simple present commits, present participle committing, simple past and past participle committed)
- To give in trust; to put into charge or keeping; to entrust; to consign; -- used with to, unto.
- To put in charge of a jailor; to imprison.
- To do; to perpetrate, as a crime, sin, or fault.
- To join a contest; to match; followed by with.
- To pledge or bind; to compromise, expose, or endanger by some decisive act or preliminary step; for example to commit oneself to a certain action, to commit oneself to doing something. (Traditionally used only reflexively but now also without oneself etc.)
- Shakespeare
- Commit not with man's sworn spouse.
Usage notes To commit, entrust, consign. These words have in common the idea of transferring from one's self to the care and custody of another. Commit is the widest term, and may express only the general idea of delivering into the charge of another; as, to commit a lawsuit to the care of an attorney; or it may have the special sense of entrusting with or without limitations, as to a superior power, or to a careful servant, or of consigning, as to writing or paper, to the flames, or to prison. To entrust denotes the act of committing to the exercise of confidence or trust; as, to entrust a friend with the care of a child, or with a secret. To consign is a more formal act, and regards the thing transferred as placed chiefly or wholly out of one's immediate control; as, to consign a pupil to the charge of his instructor; to consign goods to an agent for sale; to consign a work to the press.
Origin From Latin committere (“to bring together, join, compare, commit (a wrong), incur, give in charge, etc.”), from com (“together”) + mittere (“to send”). See mission.
