Word of the Day:
commutation
What It Means
Substitution of one thing for another; interchange.
Specifically, the substitution of one kind of payment for another, especially a switch to monetary payment from obligations of labour.
The change to a lesser penalty or punishment by the State
Commutation in Context
“Monsieur the Marquis de Sade [was] now holed up in one of his châteaux while his wife worked for the commutation of a sentence passed on him recently for poisoning and buggery.”
Did You Know?
From French commutation, from Latin commūtātiōnem, accusative singular of commūtātiō.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: commutation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “commutation.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/commutation. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.