'commandment' originates from Latin through Old French and Middle English, specifically from Medieval Latin 'commandamentum' (from the verb 'commandare'), where 'com-' meant 'together/with' and 'mandare' meant 'to entrust or order'.

'commandment' changed from Medieval Latin 'commandamentum' to Old French 'commandement', then to Middle English 'commandement', and eventually became the modern English word 'commandment'.

Initially, it meant 'an order or act of entrusting (to command)'; over time it retained the basic sense of 'an authoritative order' and also acquired the more specific religious sense of a divinely given law (as in the Ten Commandments).