to do something wrong or illegal, such as a crime or a serious mistake
The burglar tried to commit a robbery, but the alarm scared him away.
Anyone who commits fraud will face serious punishment.
✦ From Latin ‘committere’ meaning ‘to bring together, combine; entrust; begin; commit a crime’.
to promise sincerely to give time, effort, or loyalty to something or someone
After years of dating, they finally committed to marriage.
If you commit to this project, you must meet every deadline.
to legally send someone to prison, hospital, or another institution, often by court order
The judge decided to commit the offender to a rehabilitation center.
Doctors can commit a patient if they are a danger to themselves.
(computing) to permanently record or save changes in a database or version-control system
Remember to commit your code after finishing the feature.
The database will not update until the transaction is committed.
to learn something so well that you can remember it exactly; to memorize
Actors must commit their lines to memory before rehearsals.
He tried to commit all the formulas to memory for the exam.
