Commission

How to spell commission

10 letters · 3 syllables

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)