Dismissal

How to spell dismissal

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dismissal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dismissal mean?

1. nounThe act of officially removing someone from a job or position.
2. nounThe act of treating something as unworthy of serious attention or consideration.

Dismissal in a sentence

• The manager warned that repeated lateness could lead to dismissal.

• His casual dismissal of the safety concerns angered the whole team.

• She challenged her dismissal at an employment tribunal.

• The judge ordered the dismissal of the case for lack of evidence.

Where does dismissal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the verb 'dismiss', which English assembled in the fifteenth century from the Latin dimittere, a compound of dis- 'away, apart' and mittere 'to send'. The literal sense was therefore 'to send away', and the past participle dimissus supplied the doubled 's' that survives in the modern spelling. English added the noun suffix -al to turn the act of sending someone away into a thing in its own right, giving us 'dismissal' by the seventeenth century. The same mittere root quietly underpins a whole family of everyday words, including 'mission', 'permit', 'submit' and 'transmit', all of which involve some form of sending. Keeping that 'miss' (sent) element in mind helps explain why the word has a double 's' but only one final 'l'.

How the word is built

• dis- (away, apart)
• miss (sent, from Latin mittere 'to send')
• -al (noun-forming suffix)