commentary
Pluralcommentaries
- 1A spoken account of an event, especially one broadcast on television or radio as it takes place.
Live commentary from the stadium kept listeners updated on every play.
The announcer's commentary grew more excited as the runners neared the finish line.
Similarnarration, coverage, description, account, play-by-play
- 2A series of explanatory comments or annotations, especially a book that explains all or part of another work.
The new translation comes with extensive commentary on the historical background of each chapter.
Scholars still consult medieval commentary on Aristotle's writings.
Similarannotation, exegesis, explanation, interpretation, analysis
Note
Countable and uncountable uses divide neatly here. A commentary is a book, usually tied to a single text: a commentary on Aristotle. Commentary without an article is the running body of remarks itself. Those remarks need not be neutral. Henry Hallam, writing in 1827, describes a letter published "with a severe commentary," where explaining a document shades into passing judgment on it.
- 3A brief, hastily written record of transactions or events, set down as if for a memorandum.
The general's commentary, jotted down each evening in the field, later formed the basis of his memoirs.
Among his papers was hasty commentary recording the prices paid at each market town.
Similarnotes, record, memorandum, log, journal
Note
Usually plural, and at home in titles: Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War is the model. Here the word stays closest to Latin commentārius, a notebook, meaning the record a commander keeps of what was done. That separates it from the explanatory sense. These commentaries comment on events, not on another writer's book.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Middle French commentaire, from Latin commentārius or commentārium, meaning "notebook."