Other forms: engagements
An engagement is the promise to marry, and the stretch of time between the ring and the wedding. He asked her in June, the ring went on, the phone calls started, and the engagement lasted two years. Somewhere in the middle of it a date gets picked and a hall gets booked.
You get engaged, you are engaged to someone, you break off an engagement, you buy an engagement ring. Away from weddings, an engagement is a firm arrangement to be somewhere: a speaking engagement in Leeds, or the polite excuse a previous engagement. Offices and marketing use the word for attention and involvement — audience engagement, engagement with the local community, the number of people who bothered to click. Armies use it for a fight. And watch engaged in British English, which has a life of its own: an engaged tone on the phone means the line is busy, and an engaged sign on a door means somebody is already in there.
1nounengagementThe agreement to marry somebody, and the time between it and the wedding.~17%
“They announced their engagement at Christmas.”
2nounappointmentA fixed arrangement to be somewhere or to do something.~2%
“She had a speaking engagement in Leeds that evening.”
synonyms: appointment, commitment
3nouninvolvementInvolvement with something, and the attention it draws.~62%
“The post got more engagement than anything else that month.”
4nounfightA fight between armed forces.~19%
“The engagement lasted less than an hour.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 140 sentences found in the wild and placed 131 of them on a sense (9 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Engagement is engage plus -ment, and engage came from Old French engagier, to pledge — en- plus gage, a pledge. That gage traces to Frankish wadi, also a pledge, which is the same root that gives English wed. So an engagement is being under pledge, and getting engaged and getting wed turn out to be the same idea twice over.
French
engagement
English, today
engagement
From French engagement. Equivalent to engage + -ment.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA