🚔 Sending to jail 🕵️ Doing a crime

committal

7.9

An act of breaking the law

noun
/kəˈmɪtəl/

: delito

The investigation revealed the committal of several serious crimes in the city.

Examples

His committal of the offense resulted in a lengthy criminal trial.
During the trial, evidence was presented about the committal of fraud by the defendant.
In the committal of crimes like rape, theft, robbery, and dacoity, the media plays a greater role in influencing innocent minds.

Academic text (2018)

Synonyms

commission

vscommittal

Formal

38 6.1

An act of breaking the law

is the same meaning but expressed with slightly different wording

perpetration

vscommittal

2 8.0

An act of committing a crime or other bad action

focuses on crimes or offences specifically rather than broader wrongdoing

Antonyms

innocence

159 3.4

Not guilty of a crime

lawfulness

Formal

1 4.7

Being allowed by law

Compounds

committal service

7.5

A short ceremony at a grave or crematorium when people say goodbye to a dead person

committal to memory

4.2

Learning something so you remember it exactly

committal to writing

5.2

Putting ideas on paper or a screen so they are recorded

How Serious

capital offense

Formal

9 8.2

felony

Specialized

310 5.5

committal

7.9

infraction

47 7.2

Surface Forms

committal singular

committals plural

Morphology

committal = commit (transparent) = commit + al

The meaning 'the act of committing (a crime)' follows directly from 'commit' + '-al', forming a noun denoting the act.

Etymology

Committal comes from the verb commit, from com- ('with') + mittere ('to send'), and the same root is in mission, but commit also came to mean 'to do' or 'carry out' an action. So a committal can mean the 'doing' of a crime — the official record of someone having committed an offence.