Skip to main content
to consign

to consign

14 7.9
Send something or someone away so they are forgotten and never used again
  • verb
  • /kənˈsaɪn/
: condenar a
  • In Belgrade, after the partition, a Tito museum was consigned to the dustbin of history.
  • consigned to oblivion
  • consigned to the past

We've created ideologies which cannot be gain said, and anyone who does gain say them is consigned to various circles of hell.

Examples

  • We can finally consign my old bird to the scrap heap.

  • It is simply wrong to consign people to a grim future of authoritarian rule and repression.

  • So those classic systems of oppression are now consigned to the history books.

  • But the body must be consigned to God for absolution.

  • Dancy was then removed from her job and consigned to the cataloging department.

    Academic text (2000)
  • The pressures for Guadeloupeans to assimilate to metropolitan norms consign Haitians to a particularly disempowered position.

    Academic text (2003)
  • The majority of urban Africans had already been consigned to African-only townships prior to the advent of apartheid in 1948.

    Academic text (1998)
  • Furthermore, Russian suzerainty over the area consigns it to perpetual backwardness, underdevelopment, and hence authoritarianism and conflict.

    Academic text (2004)
  • Yale's Othniel Marsh reprised his Cardiff role, examining the hoax and consigning it to scientific oblivion.

    Academic text (2005)
  • The company decided to consign their artwork to an auction house for sale.

Synonyms

to commit
vsto consign
  • Formal
44 7.0

To send someone by legal order to prison or hospital

delivers something irreversibly often permanently to a place or person

Antonyms

236 3.4

To keep having something such as a job or possession

210 5.1

Refuse to give something someone wants or needs

How Final

to doom
113 5.8
to consign
14 7.9
to deliver
933 1.0
to send
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

consign infinitive
consigned past
consigned past participle
consigning present participle
consigns third person singular

Morphology

consign = sign (opaque) = con + sign

Although formally analyzable as 'con-' + 'sign', the modern meaning 'deliver/transfer to custody' is a specialized sense inherited from borrowings rather than a predictable result of productive prefixation.

Etymology

Consign comes from the Latin word consignare, made of con- ('together') and signare ('to mark' or 'to seal'), and it shares the same root as the common word sign. So to be consigned to a fate is like having your future 'sealed' — a choice or result put down that is hard to change.