Commission

How to spell commission

10 letters · 3 syllables

25 of the 49 people asked to spell commission in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is comission. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

comission commission

What people typed instead

• comission12 people
• commision6 people

How to pronounce commission

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does commission mean?

1. nounA sum or percentage paid to an agent or salesperson for completing a transaction.
2. nounA group of people officially appointed to investigate, regulate, or report on something.
3. verbTo formally order or authorise the creation or carrying out of something.

Commission in a sentence

• noun

  The estate agent earns a commission on every property sold.

• noun

  The government set up a commission to review the failures in the health service.

• verb

  The museum decided to commission a new sculpture for the entrance hall.

• noun

  Her salary is low, but the commission from big accounts makes up for it.

• noun

  The electoral commission confirmed the final results on Friday.

• verb

  The council will commission an independent study before approving the plan.

Where does commission come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin commissio, meaning 'a joining together' or 'an entrusting', which was formed from the verb committere, made up of com- 'together' and mittere 'to send' or 'to put'. Originally committere carried the sense of bringing things together or entrusting a task to someone, and the noun commissio came to mean the act of entrusting a duty or charge. English took the word in during the 1300s through Old French commission, first in the sense of an authority or charge formally granted to a person. From that idea of a delegated task grew the modern meanings: an appointed body of officials, a payment earned for carrying out a sale, and the act of formally ordering something. The double letters are the spelling trap, and they come straight from the Latin com- prefix bolting onto the miss root, with the -ion suffix turning the doubled-s verb stem into a noun.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• miss (from mittere: to send, entrust)
• -ion (noun suffix)