Dismisses

How to spell dismisses

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dismisses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dismisses mean?

1. verbSends someone away, formally removes them from a job, or rejects an idea or matter as unworthy of consideration.

Dismisses in a sentence

• The manager often dismisses staff at the end of the shift with a quick nod.

• The board dismisses any proposal that fails to show clear savings.

Where does dismisses come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the third person singular form of 'dismiss', which traces back to the Latin verb dimittere, meaning 'to send away' or 'to let go', built from dis- 'apart, away' and mittere 'to send'. The past participle dimissus shaped a Medieval Latin variant dismissus, and it was this form that English absorbed in the early 1400s, originally in formal and legal contexts about releasing people or releasing a case. The same mittere root, meaning 'to send', quietly underlies a whole family of English words such as 'mission', 'transmit', 'permit', and 'submit', which is a useful memory hook: the double 's' in dismisses comes from that Latin past-participle stem dismiss-, not from any doubling of a single base. Over time the word broadened from physically sending someone away to the modern senses of firing an employee, rejecting an idea, or formally ending proceedings. The spelling trap lives in the two separate 's' clusters, the single 's' after dis- and the doubled 'ss' before the ending.

How the word is built

• dis- (away, apart)
• miss (sent, from Latin mittere 'to send')
• -es (third person singular ending)