cometer

Forms

cometer (first-person singular present cometo, first-person singular preterite cometí, past participle cometido)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish cometer, inherited from Latin committere (“to bring together; to entrust; to set fighting, begin a fight”).^[2][3][1] That verb is formed from Latin con- + mittō (“to send, let go”), and so belongs to the same family as meter.^[4][5][6]

The same Latin verb is Italian commettere, French commettre, Occitan cometre, Catalan cometre and Romanian cumete (“to dare”).^[7][8]

De Vaan traces mittō to Proto-Italic *meit-e/o- and Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to exchange, remove”), with a development from “exchange” to “give” and “let go, send”.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Cantar de mio Cid (c. 1140, in a 14th-century copy), where the king says cometer quiero un ruego a mio Cid “I wish to put a request to my Cid”.^[10][2] Menéndez Pidal glosses the verb there as “to propose, put forward something to win its acceptance”, and elsewhere in the poem as “to attack”.^[11][12]

Semantic evolution

In Old Spanish cometer was a synonym of acometer: “to attack” in the Cid, the Libro de Alexandre and the Fuero Juzgo, “to tempt” in Berceo, where the devil muchas de vegadas lo avié cometido “had tempted him many times”, and “to undertake” and “to urge” in Alfonso X.^[13][14][11] The sense “to commit” a sin or offence appears in the Libro de buen amor and becomes common in the 15th century.^[12][13]

Covarrubias in 1611 noted that the verb was sometimes taken in a bad sense, of a crime, and that it also meant “to delegate”, whence comisión and comisario.^[15] Autoridades put “to entrust one's powers to another” first and marked “to undertake” as already antiquated.^[16] Baralt regretted in 1855 that the senses “to delegate” and “to risk oneself”, which French commettre still had, had fallen out of use.^[17] Today the main sense is to commit an offence, an error or a crime.^[3][6]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – cometer “to propose” and “to attack” in the Cantar de mio Cid;^[10] acometer is as old.^[10][2][11]
• c. 1230 – Berceo uses it for the devil's tempting of Saint Millán.^[13][10]
• c. 1260 – the Fuero Juzgo: cometeremos nuestros enemigos “we shall attack our enemies”.^[13][10]
• c. 1400 – a Latin–Spanish glossary glosses Latin comito as encomendar, cometer and pecar.^[13]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija: cometer en mal, Latin adorior, invado.^[18]
• 1543 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City, in the sense “to entrust”.^[19]
• 1611 – Covarrubias links the sense “to delegate” with comisión and comisario.^[15]
• 1843 – the Academy records the use of tropes and figures, and marks “to attack” as old.^[20]

Meanings

Verb

1. (transitive) To commit or fall into an offence, error or fault: Cometió un error al calcular el precio.^[3][1]
2. (transitive) To use a rhetorical or grammatical figure.^[3]
3. (transitive, law) To give a mercantile commission.^[3]
4. (transitive, rare) To delegate one's functions to another, entrusting a matter to them.^[3][21]
5. (transitive, obsolete) To attack; to undertake.^[3]
6. (reflexive, obsolete) To take a risk; to entrust oneself to someone.^[3]

Word family

• acometer
• cometimiento
• cometido
• acometida

Related words

• comitente
• meter
• prometer
• comisario
• comité
• Latin committō
• Italian commettere

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. meter
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. cometer
4. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
6. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. cometer
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. cometer
11. ^ a b c Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. s.v. cometer
12. ^ a b Boggs, R. S.; Kasten, Lloyd; Keniston, Hayward; Richardson, H. B. (1946), Tentative Dictionary of Medieval Spanish, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, N.C., p. 125
13. ^ a b c d e Alonso Pedraz, Martín (1986), Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, 2 vols., Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, p. 728
14. ^ Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. acometer
15. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 492
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 435
17. ^ Baralt, Rafael María (1855), Diccionario de galicismos, Madrid: Imprenta de J. Cruzado, p. 146
18. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 315
19. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. cometer
20. ^ Real Academia Española (1843), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 9th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Francisco María Fernández, p. 176
21. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. cometer