committee
UK[kəˈmɪti]US[kəˈmɪti]
n
A group of people appointed or elected to perform a specific function or to consider, investigate, or decide on a particular matter.
n
The group of people, such as Members of Parliament, appointed to consider a particular bill in a legislature.
Morpheme Breakdown
commit
ee
commit
to entrust
ee
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
Structure: commit + ee
- 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).
Examples
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.