compromise [LME] This is a borrowing via French of Latin compromittere formed from com ‘together’ and promittere ‘promise’ [LME], itself going back to pro ‘before’ and mittere ‘put, send, throw’ (see also missile and mass). The sense of the verb ‘to bring under suspicion’ is late 17th century via the idea of making too many compromises in honour or trust, and it is this sense of compromise that lies behind the Russian term kompromat (a shortening of komprometiruyushchy material ‘compromising material’), which dates from the 1930s in Russian and arrived in English in the early 21st century.