commandment

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English comandement,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French comandement, also commandement,^[4][5][2][6] formed from comander (“to command”) and the suffix -ment;^[2][7][8] the Anglo-Norman word is recorded from the early 12th century.^[9] The OED compares Old Occitan comandamen and Italian commandamento, and gives the Latin type as Vulgar Latin *commandāmentum,^[4][5] from *commandō,^[4][5] itself from Latin commendō (“to recommend, entrust to”), altered under the influence of mandō (“to commit, entrust”).^[5] It is related to command and commend.^[5][4] In Old English the Ten Commandments were ða bebodu.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

An order given by someone in authority: about 1250, in the Old English Miscellany.^[4][7] Etymonline dates the word to the late 13th century,^[5] and Merriam-Webster to the 13th century.^[2] The plural for the Ten Commandments is recorded from about 1280: "þe first comondement is þis, O God we ssul honuri".^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

The general sense, any authoritative order, is now archaic;^[4][7] the word survives mainly in the religious senses, a divine command (from about 1325) and one of the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai.^[4][5][7] From 1534 it was used of the "new commandment" of Christ,^[4] and since the 1570s, jokingly, of other sets of rules taking the place of the Decalogue, as in the eleventh commandment.^[4][7] In 16th- and 17th-century slang the ten commandments were the ten fingernails, especially of a woman scratching someone.^[4] Older senses, the act of commanding (from Chaucer) and authority or military command, died out in the 17th century.^[4] The word had four syllables in Spenser and still often in Shakespeare, and in dialect speech from Scotland to Somerset until the 19th century, but the three-syllable form appeared as early as the 13th century and prevailed in the literary language in the 17th and 18th centuries.^[4][5] Johnson (1755) defined it as mandate, command, order or precept.^[10]

Timeline

• c. 1250 – an authoritative order or injunction.^[4]
• c. 1280 – plural, the Ten Commandments.^[4][5]
• c. 1325 – a divine command.^[4]
• c. 1386 – the act of commanding, in Chaucer (obsolete by 1676).^[4]
• 1534 – the new commandment of Christ.^[4]
• c. 1544 – slang, the ten commandments, the fingernails.^[4]
• before 1577 – of other sets of rules, jokingly called new commandments.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A divine command, especially one of the Ten Commandments that, according to Exodus, God gave to Moses: the commandment against stealing.^[2][11][4]
2. (archaic or literary) Any order or precept given by authority.^[11][4][7]
3. A rule treated as binding, often jokingly, as in the eleventh commandment.^[4][7]
4. (obsolete, 1386–1676) The act of commanding; command.^[4][2]

Related words

• command
• commend
• mandate
• commander

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins