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Commit vs Perpetrate

Commit, perpetrate mean to be responsible for or to be guilty of some offense or mistake.

Commit is the term regularly used in prohibiting (as ‘in some of the Ten Commandments) or to describe engaging in an action that is counted a sin, crime, or offense.

In less specific use the word may mean little more than do or perform, but it retains to a greater or less degree its implication of reprehensibility.

Perpetrate basically implies the committing of a crime and often so strongly carries the notion of crime or offense that a neutral word can be used as the object of the verb without any doubt as to its offensive character.

However, perpetrate is also freely used of acts or actions which though not criminal are morally, socially, intellectually, or artistically reprehensible and which may range from the utterly outrageous to the mildly deplorable.