Word.ws English Dictionary

commote

commote noun: a secular division of land in mediaeval Wales.

Noun

commote (plural commotes)

  1. A secular division of land in mediaeval Wales.
    • Some cantrefi might comprise more than two commotes, for example, and the complement of townships would vary from commote to commote, determined by considerations other than mathematical symmetry.1997, Nancy Edwards, Landscape and Settlement in Medieval Wales, page 42

Verb

commote (third-person singular simple present commotes, present participle commoting, simple past and past participle commoted)

  1. (obsolete, rare) To disturb or agitate, to disrupt also in the positive sense, to put into (more) commotion, to stir up, to add to the activity of.
    • It was incidental to the closeness of relationship into which we had brought ourselves that an unfriendly state of feeling could not occur between any two members without the whole society being more or less commoted and made uncomfortable thereby.1852, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
    • It is to commote patriotism and to commote life that our Barries, Maclarens, Hardies, and Caines must go for inspiration to revivify a people growing prematurely old in a vain attempt to make the world "Anglo-Saxon."1904, John Aneurin Grey Griffith, Edward 2nd in Glamorgan

Forms of commote

Noun
pluralcommotes
alternative formcommot
alternative formcwmwd
Verb
third-person singular presentcommotes
present participlecommoting
past participlecommoted
pastcommoted

Origin of commote

Borrowed from Welsh cwmwd, from Middle Welsh kymhwt (literally “abode together”).

Back-formation from commotion.

Words formed from commote

Questions about commote

What does commote mean?
Commote means a secular division of land in mediaeval Wales.
What part of speech is commote?
Commote can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of commote?
The plural of commote is commotes.

Words near commote in the dictionary

  1. commorth
  2. commorths
  3. commos
  4. commot
  5. commotal
  6. commote
  7. commoted
  8. commotes
  9. commoting
  10. commotio cordis
  11. commotion

Source and license

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