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''commissary'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''commissary'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

commissary - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

commissary (plural commissaries)

  • A store primarily serving persons in an institution, most often soldiers or prisoners.
    • ✤ The base [Fort Meade] has its own post offices, schools, police, and fire departments. Area children, military brats and civilians alike, would flock to the base daily to take golf, tennis, and swimming lessons. Though we lived off base, my mother still used its commissary as our grocery store, to stock up on items in bulk.1
  • An account which a prisoner uses to buy provisions, or the balance of that account.
    • ✤ “We tried to provide for you while you were in there. We may not have put as much on your commissary as your in-laws, but what we gave was more to us.”2
  • A cafeteria at a television or movie studio.
  • One to whom is committed some charge, duty, or office, by a superior power; a commissioner.
    • ✤ Great Deſtiny the Commiſſary of God;3
  • An officer of the bishop, who exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction in parts of the diocese at a distance from the residence of the bishop.
    • ✤ It has been already hinted, that a Commissary, in Latin stiled Commisarius, is a Title of Ecclefiaftical Jurisdiction4
  • An officer who supplies provisions to an army.
  • (Scots law) The judge in a commissary court.
  • A higher-ranking police officer.

Etymology

From Late Latin commissarius, from commissus, past participle of committō (“to commit, entrust to”). Doublet of commissar.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkɒm.ɪ.s(ə)ɹi/
  • (General American) IPA: /ˈkɑ.mɪˌsɛɹ.i/, /ˈkɑ.məˌsɛɹ.i/
    • Audio (Connecticut): 🔊
  • (Australian) IPA: /ˈkɔm.ə.sə.ɹi/
  • Hyphenation: com‧mis‧sa‧ry

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 2019 September 17, Edward Snowden, Permanent Record, New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, page 37: ↩

  2. 2018, Tayari Jones, An American Marriage, Oneworld Publications, page 183: ↩

  3. a. 1631 (date written), J[ohn] Donne, “The Progress of the Soul”, in Poems, […] with Elegies on the Authors Death, London: […] M[iles] F[lesher] for Iohn Marriot, […], published 1633, →OCLC, stanza IV, page 3: ↩

  4. 1726, John Ayliffe, Parergon Juris Canonici Anglicani: Or, A Commentary, by Way of Supplement to the Canons and Constitutions of the Church of England. […], London: […] D. Leach, and sold by John Walthoe […], →OCLC: ↩

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