Other forms: commemorated, commemorating, commemorates
To commemorate somebody or something is to do something publicly so that they are remembered — a service, a statue, a plaque, a minute's silence. The act is deliberate and it is meant to be seen.
It is a formal word and it belongs to occasions rather than to private feeling: you commemorate a battle or an anniversary, and you remember your grandmother. The object is usually an event or a person of public standing. Note the family: a commemoration is the event, commemorative is the adjective — a commemorative coin, a commemorative plaque — and both are common in museum and civic writing. Do not confuse it with celebrate, which assumes the thing was good.
1verbcommemorateTo do something publicly so that a person or event is remembered.
“A service was held to commemorate the anniversary.”
2verbobjectOf an object, to exist as a reminder of something.
“The stone commemorates the men who never came back.”
commemorate is a way of remembering publicly.
Latin commemorare is com-, thoroughly, plus memorare, to bring to mind, from memor, mindful — the same root as memory and memorial. To commemorate is to make a whole community remember at once.
Latin
commemorātus
English, today
commemorate
1599; Latin commemorātus, perfect passive participle of commemorō, see -ate and -ate. Sporadic usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA