- commit
- commit vb 1 Commit, entrust, confide, consign, relegate are comparable when they mean to assign to a person or place for some definite end or purpose (as custody or safekeeping).Commit is the widest term; it may express merely the general idea of delivering into another's charge{
commit the management of an estate to an agent
}{on landing in Boston in 1872, my father and I were able safely to commit our trunk to the expressman— Santayana
}or it may have the special sense of a transfer to a superior power or to a place of custody{into thine hand Y commit my spirit— Ps 31:5
}{we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust— Book of Common Prayer
}{commit a person to prison
}{commit one's thoughts to paper
}To entrust is to commit with trust and confidence; to confide is to entrust with entire reliance and assurance{entrusted him with her secret
}{a government, entrusted with such ample powers . . . must also be entrusted with ample means for their execution— John Marshall
}{the right of naturalization was therefore, with one accord, surrendered by the States, and confided to the Federal Government— Taney
}{never to those bloodstained accursed hands will the future of Europe be confided— Sir Winston Churchill
}Consign implies a more formal act and frequently suggests such transfer or delivery as removes its object from one's immediate control{consign goods to an agent for sale
}{he must now . . . consign him to a living tomb again— Hawthorne
}{the barber and the curate of La Mancha . . . felt bound to wall up Don Quixote's library, and consigned to the flames many of the volumes which had so unsettled the poor knight's wits— Muggeridge
}To relegate is to consign to some particular class, position, or sphere usually with the implication of setting aside or getting rid of{[man] is relegated to his place in a classification— Newman
}{he supposed that he had disappointed the Bishop and that he was being relegated into the limbo of moderately satisfactory young parsons— Mackenzie
}Analogous words: transfer, shift, remove, *move: assign, *allot2 Commit, perpetrate mean to be responsible for or to be guilty of some offense or mistake.Commit is the term regularly used in prohibiting (as'in some of the Ten Commandments) or to describe engaging in an action that is counted a sin, crime, or offense{commit murder
}{commit adultery
}{commit blasphemy
}In less specific use the word may mean little more than do or perform, but it retains to a greater or less degree its implication of reprehensibility{commit a stupid blunder
}{commit needless errors
}Perpetrate basically implies the committing of a crime{perpetrate arson
}{perpetrate treason
}and often so strongly carries the notion of crime or offense that a neutral word can be used as the object of the verb without any doubt as to its offensive character{the deed was perpetrated at midnight
}However, perpetrate is also freely used of acts or actions which though not criminal are morally, socially, intellectually, or artistically reprehensible and which may range from the utterly out-rageous to the mildly deplorable{hastened to perpetrate the partition of your country before the Polish nation could consolidate its position— Sir Winston Churchill
}{the colossal waste they perpetrate probably does not exceed the financial blunders and stuffed overhead in big corporations— Paul
}{Peter Cornelius, who at Munich was quite successfully perpetrating . . . about the worst art of the century— Mather
}{went away feeling I had perpetrated a delightful fraud— L. P. Smith
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
