COMMANDEER (from the South African Dutch kommanderen, to command), properly, to compel the performance of military duty in the field, especially of the military service of the Boer republics (see [Commando]); also to seize property for military purposes; hence used of any peremptory seizure for other than military purposes.
COMMANDER, in the British navy, the title of the second grade of captains. He commands a small vessel, or is second in command of a large one. A staff commander is entrusted with the navigation of a large ship, and ranks above a navigating lieutenant. Since 1838 the officer next in rank to a captain in the U.S. navy has been called commander.
COMMANDERY (through the Fr. commanderie, from med. Lat. commendaria, a trust or charge), a division of the landed property in Europe of the Knights Hospitallers (see [St John of Jerusalem]). The property of the order was divided into “priorates,” subdivided into “bailiwicks,” which in turn were divided into “commanderies”; these were placed in charge of a “commendator” or commander. The word is also applied to the emoluments granted to a commander of a military order of knights.
COMMANDO, a Portuguese word meaning “command,” adopted by the Boers in South Africa through whom it has come into English use, for military and semi-military expeditions against the natives. More particularly a “commando” was the administrative and tactical unit of the forces of the former Boer republics, “commandeered” under the law of the constitutions which made military service obligatory on all males between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Each “commando” was formed from the burghers of military age of an electoral district.
COMMEMORATION, a general term for celebrating some past event. It is also the name for the annual act, or Encaenia, the ceremonial closing of the academic year at Oxford University. It consists of a Latin oration in commemoration of benefactors and founders; of the recitation of prize compositions in prose and verse, and the conferring of honorary degrees upon English or foreign celebrities. The ceremony, which is usually on the third Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, is held in the Sheldonian Theatre, in Broad St., Oxford. “Commencement” is the term for the equivalent ceremony at Cambridge, and this is also used in the case of American universities.