🤝 Promising action 🛠️ Doing something

commissive

9.9

Making a promise or saying you will do something in the future

adjective

Formal

: compromisorio

In his speech, the politician made a commissive remark, committing to improve education in the coming year.

Examples

During the ceremony, the speaker delivered a commissive statement, vowing to uphold the values of the organization.
By promising to support her friend, she made a commissive speech act that ensured her future assistance.
In these lines, Othello utters two directives and one commissive.

Academic text (2005)
In this exchange, Othello employs 56 speech acts, of which 39 are assertives, 11 requests for information, 2 requests for confirmation, 8 directives (of action), 5 expressives, and 1 commissive.

Academic text (2005)

Synonyms

promissory

vscommissive

7 7.6

That shows someone has agreed to do or pay something later

refers specifically to a spoken act where the speaker commits to future action

Antonyms

noncommittal

9 7.0

Not giving a clear answer or opinion

Surface Forms

commissive positive

Morphology

commissive = commit (semi-transparent) = commiss + ive

Formed by a productive adjectival suffix '-ive' on the commitment root (most recognizably 'commit'); the specialized technical meaning and orthographic difference (commiss- vs commit) may make it slightly less guessable to learners.

Etymology

Commissive comes from the same root as commit and commitment, from the Latin parts com- 'together' and mittere 'to send'. So a commissive speech act is like 'sending yourself' to do something in the future, a promise or vow to act.