Committed

How to spell committed

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce committed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does committed mean?

1. verbCarried out an act, pledged a resource, or bound oneself to a course of action, in the past.
2. adjectiveDedicated and loyal to a person, cause, or course of action.

Committed in a sentence

• verb

  The board committed the entire reserve fund to the new building.

• adjective

  She is a deeply committed volunteer at the local food bank.

• verb

  The manager committed to a full refund within seven days.

• adjective

  The firm stayed committed to its long-term sustainability goals.

Where does committed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense and participle of 'commit', which English borrowed in the late 1300s from the Latin verb committere, meaning 'to join, entrust, or bring together'. That verb was built from com-, meaning 'together' or 'with', and mittere, meaning 'to send' or 'to put', so the literal idea was to send things into one another or to put something into someone's charge. Over time the sense branched: 'to entrust' gave rise to commit a matter to memory or to writing, while 'to put into action' produced the darker sense of committing a crime, and 'to bind oneself' gave the modern meaning of being devoted to a cause. The same mittere root sits inside a whole family of English words, including 'transmit', 'submit', and 'mission'. The notorious spelling trap appears only when we add the suffix: the single-t 'commit' suddenly doubles to 'committed' because the stress falls on the final syllable, so writers must double both the existing m's and the closing t.

How the word is built

• com- (with, together)
• mitt (from Latin mittere: to send)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)