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summon

verbnounnounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈsʌmən//

To call people together; to convene; to convoke.

verb

  1. 1

    To call people together; to convene; to convoke.

    Silence is primary, summoning presence to itself; so it's a connection to the realm of origin.

  2. 2

    To ask someone to come; to send for.

    The cousins separated, and Nain Singh joined a caravan posing as a merchant. This time he crossed the border successfully. Singh eventually entered Jih-k’a-tse, the second-largest city in Tibet. It was in Jih-k’a-tse that he was summoned to meet the country’s second-highest religious authority, the Panchen Lama, who turned out to be only 11 years old.

  3. 3

    To order (goods) and have delivered

    You can summon groceries, alcohol and medicines to your home: chips and vodka on New Year’s Eve, say, and then aspirin on New Year’s Day.

  4. 4

    To rouse oneself to exert a skill.

    For securing the attainment of what he considered to be a most desirable end, he summoned all his abilities with a most praiseworthy energy and perseverance.

    Joseph needed to summon all his reserve to keep his self-control, for no sooner had Asa voiced his request than Joseph recalled his remark to Aaron about a child being given to this couple in lieu of their giving Mary to him.

    November 2 2014, Daniel Taylor, "Sergio Agüero strike wins derby for Manchester City against 10-man United," guardian.co.uk City will feel nonplussed when they review the tape and Pellegrini had to summon all his restraint in the post-match interviews.

  5. 5

    To call a resource by magic.

    “Why won't you teach me to summon water? I can summon fire so easily, it's only logical that I should learn to put out my mistakes.”

  6. 6

    To summons; convene.

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman somoundre, from Old French sumundre, from Latin summonēre, itself from sub + monēre, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *monéyeti, causative from *men- (“to think”). Compare typologically from the same PIE root mention, Russian помина́ть (pominátʹ), упомина́ть (upominátʹ) (developed less further, keeping strong relation with по́мнить (pómnitʹ)), also compare помина́й как зва́ли (pomináj kak zváli) (<+ звать (zvatʹ)).

noun

  1. 1

    A creature magically summoned to do the summoner's bidding.

    Conjuration magic in Baldur's Gate 3 allows players to summon a variety of helpful creatures […] These summons can assist players in combat and exploration, providing strategic advantages with their unique abilities.

  2. 2

    call, command, order

    The deceased was 58 years of age, was the picture of health even five or six hours prior to his death, when suddenly the grim messenger came with a summon from a Higher Tribunal, calling him to duties above.

noun

  1. 1

    slangA fine; a fee or monetary penalty incurred for breaking the law; usually for a minor offence such as a traffic violation.

    You better pay off the parking summon tomorrow before you kena interest on it.

  2. 2

    slangA notice of an infringement of the law, usually incurring such a penalty; a citation or ticket.

Etymology

Borrowed from Malay saman (“fine, financial penalty”), which is itself borrowed from English summons (“notice summoning someone to appear in court”). This sense re-emerged in English as summon likely due to the erroneous belief that the original singular English word summons is plural. Doublet of summons and saman.

verb

  1. 1

    slangTo impose such a fine or penalty, or to issue a notice thereof.

    The police summoned the driver for speeding.

    They kena summoned for littering.

Forms

plural
summons
past tense
summoned
past participle
summoned
present participle
summoning
third person singular
summons
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).