We commit to marriage.

In every contract, we commit to carry out certain acts in return for other parties committing to do the same.

Commit = agree to = promise = undertake = carry out = do. This is a beat-up.

Joe

A person doesn't just die from suicide, they kill themselves.
So I think committed suicide is a fair enough way of commenting on a suicide.

There is no point in lumping it in with all the other deaths a human can have, when it is obviously self-harm as the cause.
It beats me how it was ever an offense to commit suicide anyway, when you can hardly prosecute them after they are dead

Hi Suse,

Presumably, if suicide is illegal, one can be prosecuted for bungling one's suicide, although I haven't heard of that happening, at least not for a very long time.

Of course, 'assisted' suicide is something else altogether.

Cheers,

Joe

Perhaps the definition of 'commit' would help.

1. Perpetrate or carry out (a mistake, crime, or immoral act): 'he committed an uncharacteristic error'

2. Pledge or bind (a person or an organization) to a certain course or policy: 'they were reluctant to commit themselves to an opinion'

(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/commit)

Joe and Cobber appear to be interpreting the word 'commit' in the sense of binding oneself to an agreement.

However, when the author speaks of ‘committing’, clearly she means to ‘perpetrate’ or ‘carry out’. Which would make more sense. People don’t really ‘pledge’ or ‘bind’ themselves to suicide, they carry it out, and the word ‘commit’ has negative and criminogenic connotations.

So I think Brooke Murphy has a point, and brushing that off by interpreting 'commit' in a different sense to what she was, particularly when she was addressing the the correct sense sense of the word, is equivocation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation)

'Died by suicide' is as unnecessary as 'committed suicide'. Just apply the verb in the past tense: 'suicided'. It's simple and it saves ink.

I agree with the article.

Nobody knows what'll tip even the strongest over the edge. A young man his whole life in front of him suffers from a back injury that ends any hope of the career he'd worked toward his entire life and made him the passive partner in bed with the love of his life.

I wish I could have spoken to that young man before his Sweetheart found him swinging on the end of a rope; and told him that it's not over, that there's hope. Everyone has their dreams without which we are nothing!

And without a dream to believe in, we are bereft of that other pillar of mental stability, hope!

My mother who wept tears of joy, when I stepped up from the Ambo's wheelchair and walked into the house.

She used to say, God doesn't close one door without first opening another. And there's nothing like a supporting family; and a devoted and loyal spouse or lover to help you get over the tough times we all of us have to battle through from time to time. [And if you're ever privileged enough to see it, be prepared to be reduced to an over emoting whimpering wimp?]

I would have also told the young man about hyperbaric oxygen therapy and some of the almost miraculous results some folk seemed to be achieving if treated in a timely manner? Knowing that oxygen is implicated in all healing!

Finally I would have confided we all have our darkest hours when all seems lost and the voice in your head is busy feeding your negativity, with the usual lost cause rhetoric? And the very time you need to assert your authority and refuse to become a victim!

But rather add up what you still have and can still do. We all die and some far too soon, and in so many cases, when that break we were waiting for arrives as advice in the mail or a windfall sum of money that solves our insoluable problem, and would've if we just never quit!
Alan B.

Another person trying to make a name for herself by being offended at the English language.

I'm off to commit insecticide.

What a wasted effort in trying to minimise any negative reactions to the statement that somebody "committed" suicide.
The fact is that person deliberately killed him or her self.
Toni Lavis uses the correct concise term ...the person "suicided".

For goodness sake - say it like it is, not as you would wish it to be.

Both terms are wrong:

One cannot commit suicide and one cannot die by trying it: only their body would die. A more accurate term would therefore be "destroyed one's body".

---

Dear Joe,

<<Presumably, if suicide is illegal, one can be prosecuted for bungling one's suicide, although I haven't heard of that happening, at least not for a very long time>>

In the army, those who attempted suicide were charged with "sabotaging military property".

Hi Yuyutsu,

Somewhere I read that soldiers in the Russian Army attempting to commit suicide, or destroy their bodies, would be summarily executed.

Since it is probably sinful in the eyes of ISIS for their terrorists to suicide unless you're taking innocent people with you, a terrorist would probably be executed for attempted suicide. Perhaps by being drowned in a vat of acid, as reported today.

Cheers,

Joe

The term "committed suicide" does relate to the period when suicide was considered a crime.

However, as far as I know, suicide was never prosecuted, due to administrative difficulties. However the crime of attempted suicide was occasionally prosecuted.

The main problem was that the penalty for attempted suicide was never appropriate.

Surely the only appropriate punishment for the heinous crime of attempted suicide would be the death penalty.

Hi Plerdsus,

Of course, until recently, suicides couldn't be buried in consecrated ground.

An attempted suicide is, when you think about it, attempted murder. So probably in the past, would-be suicides could be jailed (or perhaps even executed ?) for that offense. But being insane, they probably did their sentence, perhaps life, in a Lunatic Asylum, which might not have been too conducive to a 'cure'.

As well, maybe I'm wrong but I have a worm of an idea that the children of suicides couldn't inherit.

So legalising suicide, provided nobody else was involved, would tidy up a lot of loose legal ends.

Cheers,

Joe