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say it: kuh-MENS
commence is a verb meaning "take the first step or steps in carrying out an action". It carries 3 recorded senses.
take the first step or steps in carrying out an action
“We began working at dawn”
“Who will start?”
“Get working as soon as the sun rises!”
“The first tourists began to arrive in Cambodia”
“He began early in the day”
“Let's get down to work now”
set in motion, cause to start
“The U.S. started a war in the Middle East”
“The Iraqis began hostilities”
“begin a new chapter in your life”
get off the ground
“Who started this company?”
“We embarked on an exciting enterprise”
“I start my day with a good breakfast”
“We began the new semester”
“The afternoon session begins at 4 PM”
“The blood shed started when the partisans launched a surprise attack”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for commence come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.