Admitted

How to spell admitted

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce admitted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does admitted mean?

1. verbPast tense of admit: confessed to or acknowledged something as true.
2. verbPast tense of admit: allowed someone or something to enter a place or be received.

Admitted in a sentence

• He admitted that the mistake on the invoice was entirely his own.

• The guard admitted only guests whose names were on the list.

• She finally admitted feeling nervous before the big presentation.

• She was admitted to the hospital late on Friday night.

Where does admitted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'admit', which English took from the Latin verb admittere, meaning 'to let in' or 'to send to'. That verb was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'towards', and mittere, meaning 'to send', the same root that gives us 'mission', 'transmit', and 'permit'. English adopted it in the late 1300s, first in the sense of allowing someone or something to enter, and the meaning 'to acknowledge or confess something' grew naturally from the idea of letting a fact in. When the suffix is added, the single t of 'admit' doubles to 'admitted' because the stress falls on the final syllable; that doubling is the usual spelling trap. The word's relatives in the mittere family all share that idea of sending, which can help anchor the single t in the root.

How the word is built

• ad- (to)
• mit (from Latin mittere: to send)
• -ted (past tense, with the t doubled before the ending)