Commute

How to spell commute

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce commute

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does commute mean?

1. verbTo travel regularly over some distance between home and a place of work or study.
2. verbTo reduce a judicial punishment to one that is less severe.
3. nounThe regular journey a person makes between home and work.

Commute in a sentence

• verb

  She has to commute nearly two hours each way by train.

• verb

  The governor agreed to commute the prisoner's sentence to life imprisonment.

• noun

  Her daily commute takes over an hour in heavy traffic.

• verb

  Many staff now commute less often because they work from home.

• verb

  Campaigners urged the court to commute the harsh penalty.

• noun

  A shorter commute was the main reason they moved house.

Where does commute come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin commutare, which meant 'to change altogether' or 'to exchange', built from the intensifying prefix com- and the verb mutare, meaning 'to change'. The same mutare root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'mutate', 'mutual', and 'permutation', all of which carry the idea of swapping or shifting. English took it on in the fifteenth century in the sense of exchanging one thing for another, and the legal meaning of swapping a harsh punishment for a lighter one grew directly from that. The modern travel sense is surprisingly recent and very practical: in nineteenth-century America, railways sold a 'commutation ticket' that exchanged many separate daily fares for one reduced season payment, and the daily traveller who bought it became a 'commuter'. The spelling trap is the single m followed by the silent-feeling 'ute' ending; remembering that the heart of the word is the Latin mutare, 'to change', keeps the order of the letters straight.

How the word is built

• com- (altogether, intensive)
• mute (from Latin mutare: to change)