COMMENCE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Commence

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/kəmˈɛns/ Listen

verb

Commence v. t. To enter upon; to begin; to perform the first act of. "Many a wooer doth commence his suit." Note: It is the practice of good writers to use the verbal noun (instead of the infinitive with to) after commence; as, he commenced studying, not he commenced to study.

Commence v. i. (past & past part. commenced; pres. part. commencing)

To have a beginning or origin; to originate; to start; to begin. "Here the anthem doth commence." "His heaven commences ere the world be past."

To begin to be, or to act as. (Archaic) "We commence judges ourselves."

To take a degree at a university. (Eng.) "I question whether the formality of commencing was used in that age."

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Etymology of 'Commence'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Commence" Quotes from Famous Books

... any Number. When no time is specified, it will be understood that the subscriber desires to commence with the Number issued after the receipt ...

— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... right and left, and get entangled in brush and arrested by precipices, and finally, as the day is nearly spent, give up the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but resolved to return on the morrow. The next day we come back and commence operations in an opening in the woods well down on the side of the mountain where we gave up the search. Our box is soon swarming with the eager bees, and they go back toward the summit we have passed. We follow back and ...

— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... and Congress should be invited to confide its interests to the mediation. This invitation is so much the more interesting, as the negotiation relative to America should go hand in hand with that of the Courts of Madrid and Versailles, and by consequence, the negotiations although separate should commence ...

— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... October, James Walsham was to go up to London, to commence his medical course. A week before he was to start, Mr. Wilks went down in the morning, intending to insist on his returning with him to the Hall. As he went down towards Sidmouth, the old soldier noticed how ...

— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... mind is intelligibly addressed by an outward image exclusively of articulate speech, so soon does art commence. But please to observe that I have laid particular stress on the words 'human mind,'—meaning to exclude thereby all results common to man and all other sentient creatures, and consequently confining myself to the effect produced by the congruity of the animal impression with ...

— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

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