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To have a beginning or origin; to originate; to start; to begin. Here the anthem doth commence. Shak. His heaven commences ere the world be past. Goldsmith.

ing; rise; origin; beginnig; start. The time of Henry VII . . . nearly coincides with the commencement of what is termed "modern history."

To commence or begin again. Howell.

A commencement made anew.

ls, and other viscera. In man, often restricted to the part between the diaphragm and the commencement of the pelvis, the remainder being called the pelvic cavity.

etc., compositions in which (like the 119th psalm in Hebrew) distinct portions or verses commence with successive letters of the alphabet. Hook.

The invasion, approach, or commencement of a disease; a fit or paroxysm.

A sharp, flat, or natural, occurring not at the commencement of a piece of music as the signature, but before a particular note.

A direction for the performer to return and recommence from the sign

the amicable manner in which it was managed. Prideoux. Amicable action (Law.), an action commenced and prosecuted by amicable consent of the parties, for the purpose of obtaining a decision of the court on some matter of law involved in it. Bouvier. Burrill. -- Amicable numbers (Math.), two numbers, each of which is…

a Deity. Ray. Why, then, is it made a badge of wit and an argument of parts for a man to commence atheist, and to cast off all belief of providence, all awe and reverence for religion South.

To have or commence an independent or first existence; to take rise; to commence. Vast chain of being! which from God began. Pope.

The act of doing that which begins anything; commencement of an action, state, or space of time; entrance into being or upon a course; the first act, effort, or state of a succession of acts or states. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Gen. i. 1.

Origin; beginning; as, the birth of an empire. New birth (Theol.), regeneration, or the commencement of a religious life.

The day in which any person is born; day of origin or commencement. Those barbarous ages past, succeeded next The birthday of invention. Cowper.

of the landing of the Pretender reached London, or May 11, 1866, when a financial panic commenced. In the United States, September 24, 1869, and September 18, 1873, on which financial panics began.

brighten into day. N. Cotton. And, all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere world be past. Goldsmith.

the same subject. It either winds up with a coda (tailpiece), or, as each voice finishes, commences anew, thus forming a perpetual fugue or round. It is the strictest form of imitation. See Imitation.

The commencement; the first period. The childhood of our joy. Shak. Second childhood, the state of being feeble and incapable from old age.

o an error of a monk (Dionysius Exiguus, d. about 556) employed to calculate the era, its commencement was fixed three or four years too late, so that 1890 should be 1893 or 1894. -- Christian name, the name given in baptism, as distinct from the family name, or surname.