Other forms: commuted, commuting, commutes
A commute is the daily trip between your home and your workplace. A long commute, the morning commute, cut the commute.
The average British commute is around half an hour each way, and research consistently finds long ones among the worst things for reported wellbeing. As a verb it means to make that trip. It also means to reduce a sentence — commute a death sentence to life — which is the older sense and comes from the idea of exchanging one thing for another.
1nouncommuteThe daily trip between home and workplace.
“My commute to work takes an hour by train.”
2verbreduceTo reduce a sentence.
“The governor commuted his death sentence to life in prison.”
commute is a journey, or a reduction.
The travel sense comes from the American commutation ticket, a season pass paid for in one commuted sum. Latin commutare means to change altogether, which is also where commuting a sentence comes from.
Latin
commūtō
English, today
commute
Borrowed from Latin commūtō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA