Consign

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /kənˈsaɪn/

Definitions

1. to give over or deliver something or someone to another's care, custody, or control, often permanently
2. to assign responsibility or transfer ownership to another party while relinquishing control over the item or individual involved
3. To entrust something or someone to the care or management of another person ; to transfer ownership or assign responsibility for something to someone else

Etymology: Before "consign" meant sending goods or people off to a new keeper, it meant something closer to pressing a seal into wax. Latin "cōnsignāre" combined "con-" (together, thoroughly) with "signāre" (to mark, sign), and it was used for furnishing a document with a seal, a formal act that certified it as genuine. The sign was the point: marking something officially claimed it. From that sense of authenticating and attaching a mark came the idea of formally assigning something to someone. Middle French "consigner" carried this forward, and English borrowed the word with the same core: placing a thing in another's keeping, with the transfer made official. The trade sense of sending goods to an agent for sale, and the later sense of committing someone to a place or fate, grew out of that same act of formal handing-over.

Synonyms: deliver, send, transfer, entrust, commit

Antonyms: retain, withhold, keep, hold, refuse