commissions

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of commission.

   The gallery juggles dozens of private commissions each year.

   Bank commissions on the international transfer ate into the profit.

   Note

   One spelling carries several countable meanings at once: assignments given to an agent or artist, fees an agent or broker takes on a transaction, and official bodies set up for a particular task. Context sorts them out. A gallery's commissions are jobs, a broker's are fees, and a government's are panels. The same spelling also serves as the present-tense verb, so look at whether a determiner or a subject comes before it.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of commission.

   The foundation commissions research on rare childhood diseases.

   Whenever a director retires, the studio commissions a formal portrait.

   Note

   This is the form a singular subject takes: the foundation commissions, she commissions. Plural subjects take the bare commission, and so does any verb after a modal (will commission, must commission). Every use is transitive, so an object always follows. It may be a person sent on a task, a work ordered (often art), or a ship put into active service.

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