committal

English

Etymology 1

commit +‎ -al

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kəˈmɪtəl/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

committal (countable and uncountable, plural committals)

1. The act of entrusting something to someone.
2. The act of committing someone to confinement; an order for someone's imprisonment.
3. The act of perpetrating an offence.
4. The act of committing a body to the grave at a burial or to the furnace at a cremation.

Alternative forms

• commital

Related terms

• commit
• commitment
• noncommittal
• committal hearing

Translations

the act of putting a body into a grave

• Galician: inhumación (gl) f, soterramento (gl) m, enterramento (gl) m
• Maori: tanumanga
• Welsh: traddodiant m

Etymology 2

committee +‎ -al

Adjective

committal (not generally comparable, comparative more committal, superlative most committal)

1. Of or relating to a committee.
2. Of or relating to commitment.
   • 1869, Medical Record, volume 3, page 17:

     On reading the work, we have become impressed with this fact, and have several times wished that the author was more committal on the treatment of several diseases in which he himself must have had a large experience.

   • 1997, Jarrett Leplin, A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism, page 138:

     He points out that the former hypothesis is less committal epistemically, and he claims that nothing more committal is required to make sense of scientific method.

   • 1989, David Owen Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics, page 138:

     Notice also that the credibility of noncommittal observational beliefs will compare in a similar way with the credibility of more committal (or theoretical) observational beliefs, such as belief that addition of a base solution to an acid solution (to take the more committal, or theoretical, version of the noncommittal observational belief just mentioned).

Further reading

• “committal”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “committal”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.