commence
Formscommences, commencing, commenced
- 1To begin or get started.
Negotiations commence on Monday after weeks of preparation.
The performance commenced precisely as the lights dimmed.
Similarbegin, start (entry), open, launch
Oppositeend, finish, conclude, cease
Note
A Latin compound in French dress: Vulgar Latin *cominitiāre, built from com- and initiō, the root English also borrowed as initiate; Middle English sometimes clipped it to comsen or cumsen. Like begin, it takes either a gerund or an infinitive after it. Melville writes "he commenced dressing" in Moby-Dick (1851), and Joseph C. Lincoln writes "he commenced to talk" in Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913). It also stands alone, as in Shakespeare's "Here the anthem doth commence."
- 2To begin to be something, or to begin to act in the role of something.
Note
Here commence is followed directly by a noun naming a role, with no article and no as. Robert Drury, fitted out with a gun and powder-horn in 1743, "commenc'd Soldier," and Coleridge in 1825 writes "we commence judges ourselves." Present-day English does not use this pattern. It says become or start out as instead, so the construction is one to recognize in older prose rather than imitate.
- 3To take a degree at a university, formally proceeding to graduation.
He commenced at Cambridge in 1850, taking his bachelor's degree with honors.
Scholars typically commence only after years of residence and examination.
Similargraduate
Note
This is a ceremonial word from older British university life, now dated. The degree follows the verb directly: George John Gray records a Cambridge fellow who "commenced M.A. in 1592," and Thomas Fuller in 1655 discusses "the Formality of Commencing." In such records it is easily misread as the everyday "begin". It marks the end of a course of study, not its start.
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Origin
Commence comes from Middle English commencen, borrowed from Anglo-Norman comencer, which came from Vulgar Latin *cominitiāre. This was formed from Latin com- plus initiō, the same root that gives English 'initiate'.