Verb

(commenc)

To begin, start.

* (William Shakespeare)

Here the anthem doth commence .

* (Oliver Goldsmith)

His heaven commences ere the world be past.

* , chapter=4

, title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=Then he commenced to talk, really talk. and inside of two flaps of a herring's fin he had me mesmerized, like Eben Holt's boy at the town hall show. He talked about the ills of humanity, and the glories of health and Nature and service and land knows what all.}}

To begin to be, or to act as.

* (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

We commence judges ourselves.

(UK, intransitive, dated) To take a degree at a university.

* Fuller

I question whether the formality of commencing was used in that age.

Verb

To lay hold on; seize; grasp; catch; clutch.

Come here an' I'll befang thee!

(obsolete) To take hold on; begin or commence upon.

(obsolete) To encompass; enclose; contain; comprehend.