Other forms: consented, consenting, consents
To consent is to say yes to something formally, when your yes is the thing that makes it allowed. A patient consents to an operation, parents consent to a school trip, you tick a box to consent to the terms.
It nearly always takes TO: you consent to a plan, never 'consent a plan'. The noun is the same word carrying more weight — written consent, informed consent, the age of consent, 'without my consent'. Consent is colder and heavier than agree: two friends agree about a film, a signature consents to a contract. In law and medicine it is the whole point, which is why informed consent means the yes only counts if you understood what you were saying yes to. The old phrase 'by common consent' means everyone accepted it without needing a vote.
1verbconsentTo give permission for something formally, or agree to it.
“Her father would not consent to the marriage.”
consent is a formal act of agreement.
Also accepted in games: agree
Consent goes back to Latin consentio, to agree, built from com-, with, and sentio, to feel — the same sentio behind sentiment and sense. To consent was to feel along with somebody. Law took the word and hardened it: what started as shared feeling now means a permission you can be held to.
Proto-Indo-European
*sent-
Latin
cōnsentiō — to agree; to assent, consent
Old French
consentir
English, today
consent
Built from
Recorded in Middle English - since circa 1225, borrowed from Old French consentir, from Latin cōnsentiō (“to agree; to assent, consent”), itself from com- (“with”) + sentiō (“to feel”) (whence con-).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA