commissioned

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of commission.

   The committee commissioned an independent review of the accident.

   Several murals were commissioned for the new subway station.

   Note

   The verb form behind both adjectives does three distinct jobs: charging someone with a task, ordering a piece of work, and putting a ship into active service. The object usually tells them apart. A commissioned report was ordered, and a vessel commissioned last spring entered service. After be, it forms a plain passive: the murals were commissioned. Placed before a noun, it shades into the "specially ordered" adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Holding an official appointment to a position of authority, especially a military rank.

   Only commissioned officers may sign and authorize these orders.

   Every commissioned aviator in the squadron passed the certification.

   Oppositenoncommissioned, enlisted

   Note

   Legal language uses this adjective well beyond the army. The Louisiana Acts of 1836 speak of a commissioned auctioneer, a civilian holding a formal warrant of office. The Law Reports of 1870 apply it to vessels: a commissioned ship of a foreign state. In military use it pairs with its hyphenated negative, as in the Alabama Acts of 1901: commissioned and non-commissioned staff officers. Either you hold a commission or you do not, so it takes no degrees.

3. 3
   adjective

   Produced specially to fulfill a particular order or request.

   The gallery displayed several commissioned portraits of local dignitaries.

   A commissioned report on city housing was released this morning.

   Similarbespoke, custom

   Oppositeunsolicited

   Note

   A word for things rather than people: artwork, a mural, a paper or report made to order. Here the commission is an order placed by a client. Gavin Ambrose and Paul Harris's The Fundamentals of Graphic Design (2008) ends the process with the artwork delivered to the client. By contrast, the "officially appointed" sense describes someone who holds authority. A commissioned officer holds a commission; a commissioned portrait fulfills one.

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