Both Uses of
commend
in
The Mill on the Floss
- Timpson had a large family of daughters; Mr. Riley felt for him; besides, Louisa Timpson's face, with its light curls, had been a familiar object to him over the pew wainscot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years; it was natural her husband should be a commendable tutor.†
Chpt 1.3 *commendable = deserving of praisestandard suffix: The suffix "-able" means able to be. This is the same pattern you see in words like breakable, understandable, and comfortable.
- But it is well known that this conjugal complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of the sex, who are scarcely alive to the responsibilities of a wife as a constituted check on her husband's pleasures, which are hardly ever of a rational or commendable kind.†
Chpt 1.12
Definitions:
-
(1)
(commend as in: I commend her work) praise or recommend
-
(2)
(commend as in: I commend her to your care) to entrust to another for future care