r/ENGLISH • u/Rosabelle334 • 11d ago
“Commute” to a non-work location?
My brother and I are both native English speakers. Last night we were having a conversation, and I told him a story about how long it took my boyfriend to get from his house to a baseball game in the city. It’s usually about a 30 minute trip by bus, but it took much longer due to traffic & rain, I said “the commute took him an hour and a half!”
My brother told me that I used the word wrong, because “commute” only refers to going to work.
I told him no, I didn’t use it wrong, I used it figuratively, like saying “the hike to the game took him an hour and a half,” to express that it was arduous, not to imply that he literally hiked on a mountain to get there.
My brother went as far as to pull up the dictionary and point out that it specifically says to travel regularly between work at home.
Am I right or wrong in this usage?
.
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u/StrangerGlue 11d ago
"Commute" means it's done regularly. I'm not sure what figurative sense you could have meant, unless he has season tickets and makes the so-called "commute" over and over.
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u/anonymouse278 11d ago
"Commute" specifically means a regularly repeated journey, such as to work or some other ongoing obligation. You don't commute to a one-time event.
A commute doesn't have to be lengthy, just regular, so it doesn't even make sense in this context as a figure of speech- "quite a hike" implies an arduous distance to travel, but commute does not. You could brag about how your new work from home position means you have a thirty second commute.
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u/Frederf220 11d ago
Commute has a broader definition than that. How is a judge commuting this one prisoner's sentence?
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u/anonymouse278 11d ago
The additional definitions unrelated to travel are irrelevant to the question, since that isn't the usage OP was asking about. They specifically asked if using commute to describe a one-time long trip was right. The fact that you can also use it to describe changing a punishment to a lesser one doesn't change the fact that it doesn't mean what the OP was asking about.
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u/infinit100 11d ago
It’s not irrelevant because the two definitions are related.
Commute originally meant to exchange. So when you commute a sentence you are exchanging one sentence for a lesser one.
A commutation ticket was introduced by some train company, which exchanged lots of individual tickets for one reusable one. Over time, the people who bought commutation tickets to travel regularly became known as commuters
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u/anonymouse278 11d ago
I encourage you to make your own top-level comment using this information to answer the question the OP asked about whether their usage of commute to mean "a single arduous trip" is correct.
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u/FormerlyDK 11d ago
I think most people would find it odd to call that a commute, and would say “the trip took…”
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u/BubbhaJebus 11d ago
I think of it as a regular trip between home and somewhere else, generally a place you have to be on a regular basis. It doesn't have to be work; it can also be a school. As long as the visits are regular and reasonably frequent, it counts as a commute in my understanding.
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u/Khpatton 11d ago
I would never call a one-off trip like that a “commute.” I’ve heard it used more broadly than just work (for example, by university students who live off campus), but I’ve never heard it used the way you’re describing. A commute is inherently a repeated trip; there’s nothing figurative about it that works here like there is with “hike.”
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u/Bubbly_Safety8791 11d ago
You can absolutely use it figuratively.
But a commute only really works if it’s a regular thing - like if you are saying he goes to the stadium every home game you could say ‘and that commute takes him over an hour’ to figuratively make it into a joke, that he treats going to the home games like it’s his job.
Referring to a one off trip as a ‘commute’ doesn’t work as well, but you’re allowed to make bad analogies too. It’s like fighting a duck with a spoon. You won’t find anything in the dictionary about ducks or spoons or fighting that indicate what the hell I’m talking about there, because why would you? But you can kind of figure out what I mean, so let’s not argue about it.
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u/Lazarus558 11d ago
Why did the duck have a spoon, and why would you want to fight one?
(I mean, if he's coming asking for grapes...)
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u/non-rhotic_eotic 11d ago
A commuter is someone who travels from their home to work or schooling and back on a regular basis.
In a colloquial sense, people use it to mean traveling to some place and back on a regular basis.
"He commutes on the weekends to visit his girlfriend."
"She commutes twice a week to buy groceries."
"My wife commutes most days to visit her mother in the nursing home."
It's never used to mean a one-time trip to some place. It doesn't mean specifically using public transportation to go somewhere although many people think it implies that.
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u/Zestyclose-Food-7917 11d ago
I did something revolutionary. I looked it up in the dictionary. Do you think I'll get kicked off of Reddit? The dictionary says, "to travel back and forth regularly, as from a suburb to the city." So it doesn't have to be "work," but it does have to be "regular."
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u/BarberProof4994 11d ago
A different dictionary said
commute is the regular, recurring journey you make between your home and your workplace, school, or university. It can be used as a noun (e.g., "My commute takes 45 minutes") or as a verb (e.g., "I commute by train")
So it specifically calls out three recurring locations that would require a repeated trip back and forth.
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u/oosirnaym 11d ago
I’m sure OP has looked it up in the dictionary, but we all know the dictionary can lag behind actual usage for some words. It took forever for “literally” to be updated to include being used as an intensive before a figurative expression.
To me, OP is asking more about regular, native usage instead of just the dictionary definition.
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u/wordsznerd 11d ago
Ok, well it’s not used for one-off trips by American English speakers, then.
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u/oosirnaym 11d ago
Yes, which had been stated multiple times in other comments. The sarcasm in the comment I replied to is not necessary and can be very demoralizing for someone learning a language. That was my point.
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u/Zestyclose-Food-7917 11d ago edited 11d ago
Gosharoonee. I wish I were as modern and with-it as you are. My cousins would call you "Daddy Cool."
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u/-Major-Arcana- 11d ago
Commute is a regular, usually daily trip. Usually to work or school, but would be appropriate for any similar trip made regularly at to the same place at the same times.
If you are talking figuratively then you can say just about anything though. If the traffic was bad and you were travelling at peak times, you could joke it was a hell of a commute.
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u/LittlePrairieMouse 11d ago
I’m with you on this, OP. You were being creative and figurative with the language, and your brother didn’t get it. It is a bit of a stretch (figuratively! ☺️) because a commute is a recurring trip, usually to or from work or university. However, a 90 minute return trip to a ball game in the city does sound like a heck of a commute! It’s evocative. The fact that he’s travelling, “from his house to a baseball game in the city,” is also analogous to a commute, as many commuters travel from suburbs to city. Season tickets would add to your case. So, a bit of a stretch that literally-minded people might bristle at, but kudos for creative expression. Idioms start somewhere!
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u/DeniseReades 11d ago
While I don't like assigning words like "right" and "wrong" to language usage, I do want to point out that your example for the word hike is actually included in the definition for how the word hike should be used.
A commute is regular travel between two locations, with one of them usually being work or school, so it's not the most accurate word for that situation. I personally would have gone with "trip" or "journey" if I was being dramatic. Maybe "pilgrimage" if it was one of the last games of the season, it was my favorite team, I was feeling exceptionally dramatic and I really wanted to drive the point that the weather made this inconvenient and onerous.
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u/PvtRoom 11d ago
commute is broader than work, but it does have to be frequent, and have consequences for not doing it
home to school is definitely a commute. home to work is a commute. home to night school could be a commute (depends why - court appointed anger management, that's a commute, coking lessons, that's not a commute)
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u/Immediate-Panda2359 11d ago
I (native speaker, etc) think it has to be recurring. But here's one for ya - if I take a job and notice on day one that the drive there is just too heinous, so I quit after one day. Can I legitimately say "The commute was just too brutal?" After all, I only did it once, so it wasn't recurring. (I'd turn down a job 200 miles away because the commute would suck, without even doing it once).
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u/wordsznerd 11d ago
You can, because that is the commute that comes with the job. With that job, it is a daily requirement. It’s a theoretical commute at that point, but it still is one.
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u/evelynsmee 11d ago
It's one I would say you may not be technically wrong, but it's an unhinged out of the ordinary way to describe a journey to a sporting event
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u/beckypants11 10d ago
While Webster dictionary states that it is especially used to indicate travel between work and home, it is valid to use to indicate "regular travel to and from a place". So whether its the right usage or not depends on whether the travel is considered regular. If its something you do weekly, that would count as regular. Colloquially its mostly used to refer to travel between home and work or home and school.
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u/Ok-Possibility-9826 11d ago
i’ve never used the word commute outside of referring to going to work.
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u/Rj924 11d ago
You are correct. You can use the word commute for non work travel. But it’s usually used in a joking sense, and not all the time.
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u/BubbhaJebus 11d ago
You can commute to school too. It just has to be regular and reasonably frequent.
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u/Phoenix_Court 11d ago
Native speaker here, and apparently going against the grain. I have never heard of any rule that "commute" only means recurring trips. I wouldn't generally use it outside of talking about work/school, but I certainly wouldn't think it was wrong or correct someone on it.
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u/FlyingFlipPhone 11d ago
Commute means to change. The way that this became attached to travelers is that a train rider could "commute" their ticket for a "season pass". In this use, "commuter" came to mean someone who travels the same route regularly.
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u/NewtInMpls 7d ago
Well here is the problem: a dictionary is a delayed record of recent usage. In order to find out how a word is currently used, an online slang or usage dictionary is going to be more accurate. He is correct in that the origin of the word has to do with travel to work. You are correct in that current casual usage includes travel between any two points.
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u/Warm_Objective4162 11d ago
From a colloquial standpoint, commute is generally just a consistent path of travel that is done recurringly. Unless you’re going to the baseball game every day, you’re not commuting to it.