Commit

Pronunciation

• IPA: /kəˈmɪt/
• Rhymes: -ɪt

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.

Full definition of commit

Verb

1. To give in trust; to put into charge or keeping; to entrust; to consign; -- used with to, unto.
• Bible, Psalms xxxvii. 5Commit thy way unto the Lord.
• ShakespeareBid him farewell, commit him to the grave.
2. To put in charge of a jailor; to imprison.
• ClarendonThese two were committed.
3. To do; to perpetrate, as a crime, sin, or fault.
• Bible, Exodus xx. 4Thou shalt not commit adultery.
4. To join a contest; to match; followed by with.
5. 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.)http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_speech/v074/74.3shapiro.html
• JuniusYou might have satisfied every duty of political friendship, without committing the honour of your sovereign.
• MarshallAny sudden assent to the proposal ... might possibly be considered as committing the faith of the United States.
6. (obsolete, Latinism) To confound.
• Miltoncommitting short and long quantities
7. (obsolete, intransitive) To commit an offence; especially, to fornicate.
• 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, II.12:the sonne might one day bee found committing with his mother ...
• ShakespeareCommit 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.

Derived terms

• commit suicide
• commit oneself

Related terms

• commitment
• committal
• noncommittal

Noun

1. (computing) The act of committing (e.g. a database transaction or source code into a source control repository), making it a permanent change.
• 1988, Klaus R Dittrich, Advances in Object-Oriented Database Systems: 2nd International WorkshopTo support locking and process synchronization independently of transaction commits, the server provides semaphore objects...
• 2009, Jon Loeliger, Version Control with GitEvery Git commit represents a single, atomic changeset with respect to the previous state.