Consigned

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To have transferred control or custody of an item to another person or entity for a particular purpose or duration To have allocated an object or responsibility to someone else for handling or safekeeping To have delivered a task or commodity to another for management or sale in a designated arrangement
2. Having placed something under someone else's responsibility or authority
3. Delivered into the hands of another person or group for oversight or use

Etymology: "Consigned" is the past form of "consign," so its story is really the story of the verb. In Latin, "cōnsignāre" meant to furnish something with a seal, to mark it officially as genuine. The prefix "con-" (together) joined "signāre" (to mark, sign), from "signum," a sign or seal. A document or object sealed this way was formally certified and placed in someone's keeping. English took the word from Middle French "consigner," or possibly straight from Latin, and the sense of formal marking carried over into handing something over to another party. To consign something was to commit it, officially and with a kind of paperwork-like finality, to a person or place. That is why a shipment can be consigned to a warehouse, and why a person can be consigned to an outcome they cannot escape. The modern figurative sense of handing over responsibility grows naturally from that older idea of formally entrusting something to another's care. A seal once guaranteed that the transfer was real, and the word has kept the sense of an act that is deliberate and binding.

Synonyms: delivered, assigned, entrusted, handed over, transferred

Antonyms: retained, withheld, kept, saved, held