Committee

How to spell committee

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce committee

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does committee mean?

1. nounA group of people appointed or elected to manage, consider, or report on a particular matter.

Committee in a sentence

• The planning committee meets on the first Monday of every month.

• She chairs the fundraising committee at her local hospital.

Where does committee come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Committee grew out of the verb 'commit', which English took from the Latin committere, literally 'to send together' or 'to join', formed from com- meaning 'together' and mittere meaning 'to send' or 'to put'. By the late 1400s, to commit something meant to entrust or hand it over to someone's care, and from that sense English coined 'committee' for a person or group to whom a matter was entrusted or referred. The familiar modern meaning, a body of people appointed to manage or consider a particular business, was firmly established by the 1600s in parliamentary and legal language. The word that finishes with three double-letter pairs in quick succession, the doubled m, the doubled t, and the doubled e, is what catches educated adults out, since the spelling does not match the way the single stressed 'mit' is heard. Remembering that 'commit' already carries one doubled m and a single t, and that the suffix adds a second t and the -ee ending, helps fix the trap.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• mit (from Latin mittere: to send/put)
• -ee (noun suffix denoting a body of people)