commote

English

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Welsh cwmwd, from Middle Welsh kymhwt (literally “abode together”).

Noun

commote (plural commotes)

1. A secular division of land in mediaeval Wales.
   • 1997, Nancy Edwards, Landscape and Settlement in Medieval Wales, page 42:

     Some cantrefi might comprise more than two commotes, for example, and the complement of townships would vary from commote to commote, determined by considerations other than mathematical symmetry.

Alternative forms

• commot
• cwmwd

Derived terms

• commotal

 

Etymology 2

Back-formation from commotion

Verb

commote (third-person singular simple present commotes, present participle commoting, simple past and past participle commoted)

1. (obsolete, rare) To disturb or agitate, to disrupt also in the positive sense, to put into (more) commotion, to stir up, to add to the activity of.
   • 1852, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance:

     It was incidental to the closeness of relationship into which we had brought ourselves that an unfriendly state of feeling could not occur between any two members without the whole society being more or less commoted and made uncomfortable thereby.

   • 1904, John Aneurin Grey Griffith, Edward 2nd in Glamorgan:

     It is to commote patriotism and to commote life that our Barries, Maclarens, Hardies, and Caines must go for inspiration to revivify a people growing prematurely old in a vain attempt to make the world "Anglo-Saxon."

Latin

Participle

commōte

1. vocative masculine singular of commōtus