Word.ws English Dictionary

commemorate

/kəˈmɛməˌɹeɪt/

commemorate verb: to honour the memory of someone or something with a ceremony or object.

Verb

commemorate (third-person singular simple present commemorates, present participle commemorating, simple past and past participle commemorated)

  1. (transitive) To honour the memory of someone or something with a ceremony or object.
    • On November 11th we commemorate the fallen with a march.
    • On the anniversary of Korczak's murder, Israel commemorated him with a special postal issue. As a stamp collector and philatelic columnist, it pleased me greatly when other countries followed Israel's example in honoring him.2009, Naava Piatka, No Goodbyes: A Father-Daughter Memoir of Love, War and Resurrection, page 98
    Synonyms:
    memorialize
  2. (transitive) To serve as a memorial to someone or something.
    • The cenotaph commemorates the fallen.

Adjective

commemorate (comparative more commemorate, superlative most commemorate)

  1. (obsolete, rare) Commemorated.
    • In almost all the Psalms of praise, we find the preceding distress and afflictions […] first pathetically commemorat.1671, Robert MacWard, The True Non-Conformist..., line 274

commemorate meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

commemorate in Urdu

یاد منانا, ذکر کرنا

commemorate in Bengali

স্মরনীয় করে রাখা

commemorate in Malayalam

സ്മരണ നിലനിർത്തുക, ഓർമ്മയ്ക്കായി ആഘോഷം കൊണ്ടാടുക, സ്മാരകോത്സവം ആചരിക്കുക

commemorate in Kannada

ಸ್ಮಾರಕೋತ್ಸವ ನಡೆಸು
More languagesFewer languages
commemorate in Sanskrit
कृ kṛ, कीर्त्
commemorate in Indonesian
memperingati
commemorate in Vietnamese
kỷ niệm, tưởng nhớ

Examples of commemorate in a sentence

  • People often pray the chaplet at 3:00 pm to commemorate Jesus' death.
  • To commemorate our 50th anniversary we've rolled out a new pant with our signature blue and white seams.
  • "American Yiddish commemorated this era of poor management with the term "kessel garten", meaning a crowded and disorderly place."

All 39 example sentences with commemorate

Synonyms of commemorate

Forms of commemorate

Verb
third-person singular presentcommemorates
present participlecommemorating
past participlecommemorated
pastcommemorated
Adjective
comparativemore commemorate
superlativemost commemorate

Past tense of commemorate: commemorated

Origin of commemorate

First attested in 1599; borrowed from Latin commemorātus, perfect passive participle of commemorō, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix). Sporadic usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English.

Words formed from commemorate

Questions about commemorate

What does commemorate mean?
Commemorate means to honour the memory of someone or something with a ceremony or object.
What is commemorate in Urdu?
Commemorate in Urdu is یاد منانا, ذکر کرنا. See Commemorate meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is commemorate?
Commemorate can be a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce commemorate?
Commemorate is pronounced /kəˈmɛməˌɹeɪt/.
What is the past tense of commemorate?
The past tense of commemorate is commemorated.

Words near commemorate in the dictionary

  1. commem.
  2. commemorabilia
  3. commemorable
  4. commemorand
  5. commemorands
  6. commemorate
  7. commemorated
  8. commemorates
  9. commemoratest
  10. commemorateth
  11. commemorating

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: commemorate (page history and authors); commemorate (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); commemorate (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); commemorate (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); commemorate (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); कीर्त् (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-commemorate.wav.

Cite this entry: “commemorate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/commemorate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.