commissioner
noun
Simple meaning
An official in charge of a government department.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kuhmishuhnerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
kəˈmɪʃənɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
An official in charge of a government department, especially a police force.
Someone commissioned to perform certain duties.
A government administrator
European Union
A member of the European Commission.
Someone who commissions something.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: An official in charge of a government department, especially a police force.
Used this way, commissioner is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in government or politics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Official and authoritative
- Usage feel
- Formal and precise
Where it naturally appears
- Government/politics
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use commissioner
- “The commissioner announced new policies for public safety.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
A special group delegated to consider some matter.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A senior diplomat from one country to another who is assigned ambassadorial rank.
A commissioner appointed to supervise banks.
A commissioner in charge of public parks.
A civil commissioner appointed to supervise the duties and discipline of the police.
The representative of Puerto Rico in the United States House of Representatives.
A commissioner in charge of public housing.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- mayornoun
- treasurynoun
- appointmentnoun
- inspectornoun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.