committee
Meaning
A group of people appointed or elected to perform a specific function or to consider, investigate, or decide on a particular matter.
The group of people, such as Members of Parliament, appointed to consider a particular bill in a legislature.
Structure
Usage
The school formed a committee to organize the annual science fair.
The bill was debated extensively by the select committee before reaching the floor.
She sits on the committee for environmental sustainability.
Etymology
The word committee has a layered history, beginning with its core Latin verb committere, meaning "to bring together, join, or entrust." This verb itself is a compound of com- (together) and mittere (to send). In medieval legal and parliamentary English, the past participle "committed" was used to describe a matter referred or entrusted to someone for consideration. The suffix -ee, borrowed from Anglo-French legal terminology, was then attached to form a noun identifying the person or group to whom a duty or question was committed. Over time, the meaning shifted from the individual recipient of a trust to the collective body entrusted with a specific task, solidifying its modern sense of an appointed deliberative or administrative group.
Analysis
- commit: From Latin committere (to bring together, entrust, perpetrate). In this structure, it functions as a verbal root meaning "to entrust" or "to refer". - ee: A suffix of Anglo-Norman French origin, from Latin -atus, forming nouns denoting a person who is the object or beneficiary of an action (as in employee, nominee).