English

Verb

commute ‎(third-person singular simple present commutes, present participle commuting, simple past and past participle commuted)

1. (intransitive) To regularly travel from one's home to one's workplace or school, or vice versa.

   I commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan by bicycle.

   1. (intransitive) To journey, to make a journey
      • 2015, Elizabeth Royte, Vultures Are Revolting. Here’s Why We Need to Save Them., National Geographic (December 2015)

   • By one estimate, vultures either residing in or commuting into the Serengeti ecosystem during the annual migration—when 1.3 million white-bearded wildebeests shuffle between Kenya and Tanzania—historically consumed more meat than all mammalian carnivores in the Serengeti combined.

2. (intransitive, mathematics) Of an operation, to be commutative, i.e. to have the property that changing the order of the operands does not change the result.

   A pair of matrices share the same set of eigenvectors if and only if they commute.

3. To exchange; to put or substitute something else in place of, as a smaller penalty, obligation, or payment, for a greater, or a single thing for an aggregate.

   to commute tithes; to commute charges for fares

   1. (transitive, finance) To pay out the lumpsum present value of an annuity, instead of paying in instalments.
   2. (intransitive) To pay, or arrange to pay, in gross instead of part by part.

      to commute for a year's travel over a route

   3. (transitive, law, criminology) To reduce the sentence previously given for a criminal offense.

      His prison sentence was commuted to probation.

      • Macaulay

        The utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence should be commuted from burning to beheading.

   4. (intransitive) To obtain or bargain for exemption or substitution; to effect a commutation.
      • (Can we date this quote?) Jeremy Taylor:

        He […] thinks it unlawful to commute, and that he is bound to pay his vow in kind.

Derived terms

• commuter
• commuting

Translations

Noun

commute ‎(plural commutes)

1. A regular journey to or from a place of employment, such as work or school.
2. The route, time or distance of that journey.

Translations

French

Pronunciation

• Homophones: commutent, commutes

Verb

commute

1. first-person singular present indicative of commuter
2. third-person singular present indicative of commuter
3. first-person singular present subjunctive of commuter
4. first-person singular present subjunctive of commuter
5. second-person singular imperative of commuter