How to use commute in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb, noun

Commute means to exchange substantially; to abate but not abolish completely, a penalty, obligation, or payment in return for a great, single thing or an aggregate; to cash in; to lessen. Example: “His prison sentence was commuted to probation.”

Examples of commute by meaning

verbTo exchange substantially; to abate but not abolish completely, a penalty, obligation, or payment in return for a...

to commute tithes into rentcharges for a sum
to commute market rents for a premium
to commute daily fares for a season ticket

verbTo pay, or arrange to pay, in advance, in a lump sum instead of part by part.

to commute the daily toll for a year's pass

verbTo reduce the sentence previously given for a criminal offense.

His prison sentence was commuted to probation.
Ruslan Kutaev is evidence of this: not only was the elderly man sentenced to four years in prison (later commuted to two months), but he was tortured and his family threatened.2018, Dominic Rubin, Russia's Muslim Heartlands: Islam in the Putin Era, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 207

verbOf an operation, to be commutative, i.e. to have the property that changing the order of the operands does not change...

A pair of matrices share the same set of eigenvectors if and only if they commute.

nounA regular journey between two places, typically home and work.

If you're hearing me then it means your ego has been commuted successfully into this CAT with zero errors.2022, MindThunk, Ctrl Alt Ego
PS: The average commute time in the freewayless City of Vancouver is 27 minutes, while outside of the City of Vancouver the average commute time is 31 minutes.2012 July 12, Nathan Pachal, “TomTom Congestion Index Useless for Metro Vancouver”, in The South Fraser Blog

verbTo regularly travel from one's home to one's workplace or school, or vice versa.

I commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan by bicycle.
My convention diary is unusually disjointed, since I was mingily commuting from Berkshire rather than pay £65 per night for a single room.2005, David Langford, The Sex Column and Other Misprints, page 66

More sentences with commute

My new job suits me, as I work fewer hours and don't have to commute so much.From the entry suit
Many people commute into the business district from the outskirts of town.From the entry outskirt
I will be a happy camper when they fix the potholes on my commute.From the entry happy camper
He lives furthest from the office, so his commute is the longest.From the entry furthest
Commuting to work is the number one reason to own a car.From the entry number one
Intraurban commuting would be helped by mass transit but interurban commuting less so.From the entry intraurban
They moved closer to work to cut down commuting time.From the entry move
Mulligan's sentence was commuted from death to transportation.From the entry transportation
He washes dishes in Manhattan. He commutes from Jersey, just like many others who can't afford Manhattan's ridiculous rents.From the entry jersey
My commute drive time is usually 45 minutes, but it can be 20 if I leave at 5:30am.From the entry drive time
After nearly twelve hours at the office plus a nightmare commute home, I was fried and couldn’t think of anything but sleep.From the entry fried
Though I knew we shouldn't be there, she pulled me out of the tunnel and into the dark layup, its floors still grubby from the morning commute many hours ago.From the entry layup
It meant all through journeys required at least two changes of train, making commuting to London unrealistic.2023 January 25, Paul Clifton, “Network News: Landslip wrecks London commuter services for 'weeks'”, in RAIL, number 975, page 8. From the entry unrealistic
What native Angelino would willingly subject themselves to a fifty-minute commute?2022, Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Vintage (2023), page 217. From the entry Angelino
It feels strange to be back on my usual commute, after so long being a house hermit.2021, Mary Hargreaves, Enough Already. From the entry house hermit
After he's caffeinated, he makes the now familiar morning commute down George Washington Memorial Parkway to Langley.2014, Marc Guggenheim, Overwatch. From the entry caffeinate
Projector Mansfield commuted between his managerly duties in Billerica and his brewing prospects in Maine.1959, Linwood W. Moody, The Maine Two-footers: The Story of the Two-foot Gauge Railroads of Maine. From the entry managerly
The hardest thing for me to unaccustom myself to will be commuting.1934, Stevens Indicator - Volume 51, page 123. From the entry unaccustom
The punishment was egregious, and Fulvet had commuted it, but the skiffers had been whipped into a fury.2021 December 7, M. A. Carrick, The Liar's Knot, Orbit, →ISBN. From the entry skiffer
This may not be an idle threat, given the future decline expected in London and South East commuting.2020 December 2, Industry Insider, “The costs of cutting carbon”, in Rail, page 76. From the entry idle threat
She commutes to work because she does not live nearby and usually packs a lunch to save time.2020 March 24, Jingyan Teng, “Poverty alleviation factories resume operations in Ningxia”, in China Internet Information Center, archived…. From the entry Jingyuan
Sharing my predicament over a breakfast last week, he told me he commutes to his office every day by bike.2017 November 16, Jo Ellison, “Help: the gym has turned us into slobs”, in Financial Times. From the entry Tour de France
For the first time, residents could live within North Pomfret and conveniently commute to non-farm jobs outside of the neighborhood.2011, Cameron Clifford, Farms, Flatlanders, and Fords: A Story of People and Place in Rural Vermont 1890-2010. From the entry automobility
Both work -- Jenny as a freelance writer from home, Marc full-time-plus as a civil engineer with a long commute.2007 October 30, Terry Cettina, “How to even the score on housework, kid duty”, in CNN. From the entry freelance
In this Section we adonize the Lax equations of 89.1 into an infinite commuting hierarchy in the space of dressing variables.2000, Boris A. Kupershmidt, KP Or MKP: Noncommutative Mathematics of Lagrangian, Hamiltonian, and Integrable Systems, →ISBN, page 227. From the entry adonize
However, since T(z) commutes with A(z), the transformed system has coefficient matrix A(z)-zq'(z)I and hence is again meromorphic at infinity.2000, Werner Balser, Formal Power Series and Linear Systems of Meromorphic Ordinary Differential Equations, Springer, page 39. From the entry meromorphic
But while the decline in season ticket sales as a proportion of fares income has continued, commuting has by no means died.2025 September 3, Christian Wolmar, “9 to 5: The changing face of commuting”, in RAIL, number 1043, page 57. From the entry flexibly
We optimised for quality of life: expensive rent in an overvalued area but no commute and a family-oriented neighborhood, possibly similar to your experience.2020 May 26, ConcreteAndStone, r/simpleliving, Reddit, archived from the original on 22 Sep 2025. From the entry permarenter
Life is an endless treadmill of work, commuting and recovering at home, often with the Internet for company and little other respite.2016, Thomas Burgess, From Here to Prosperity, Shepheard Walwyn, →ISBN. From the entry endie

Meaning of commute

verb To exchange substantially; to abate but not abolish completely, a penalty, obligation, or payment in return for a great, single thing or an aggregate; to cash in; to lessen.
verb To pay, or arrange to pay, in advance, in a lump sum instead of part by part.
verb To reduce the sentence previously given for a criminal offense.

Full definition of commute

Questions about commute in a sentence

How do you use commute in a sentence?: Commute is used as a verb and noun. For example: “His prison sentence was commuted to probation.”
What is a short sentence with commute?: “His prison sentence was commuted to probation.”
What does commute mean?: Commute means to exchange substantially; to abate but not abolish completely, a penalty, obligation, or payment in return for a great, single thing or an aggregate; to cash in; to lessen.

Adapted from Wiktionary: commute (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use commute in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/commute. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.