Admission

How to spell admission

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce admission

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does admission mean?

1. nounThe act of being allowed to enter a place, institution, or group, or the fee charged for entry.
2. nounA statement acknowledging that something, often unwelcome, is true.

Admission in a sentence

• Admission to the museum is free on the first Sunday of each month.

• His admission that he had forgotten the deadline surprised the whole team.

• Her admission to the university depended on her final exam results.

• The report was, by her own admission, far from finished.

Where does admission come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin admissio, the noun built on the verb admittere, which literally meant 'to send to' or 'to let in', combining ad- 'to' with mittere 'to send'. The same mittere root, meaning 'to send', sits behind a whole family of English words such as 'mission', 'permit', 'transmit', and 'dismiss', and it explains the doubled letters in the middle: the past participle stem was missus, giving the -miss- spelling. English took the word in during the fifteenth century, first in the sense of being allowed to enter a place or position. The meaning of confessing or acknowledging something developed a little later, on the idea of letting a fact in or granting that it is true. Remembering that admission is really 'ad' plus 'miss' plus 'ion' keeps the single d and the double s in the right places.

How the word is built

• ad- (to)
• miss (sent, from Latin mittere 'to send')
• -ion (noun suffix)