commote meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

commote

noun

Etymology Borrowed from Welsh cwmwd, from Middle Welsh kymhwt (literally “abode together”).

A secular division of land in mediaeval Wales.

Some cantrefi might comprise more than two commotes, for example, and the complement of townships would vary from commote to commote, determined by considerations other than mathematical symmetry.1997, Nancy Edwards, Landscape and Settlement in Medieval Wales, page 42:

verb

Etymology Back-formation from commotion.

Obsolete, Rare To disturb or agitate, to disrupt also in the positive sense, to put into (more) commotion, to stir up, to add to the activity of.

It was incidental to the closeness of relationship into which we had brought ourselves that an unfriendly state of feeling could not occur between any two members without the whole society being more or less commoted and made uncomfortable thereby.1852, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance:
It is to commote patriotism and to commote life that our Barries, Maclarens, Hardies, and Caines must go for inspiration to revivify a people growing prematurely old in a vain attempt to make the world "Anglo-Saxon."1904, John Aneurin Grey Griffith, Edward 2nd in Glamorgan: