Emission

How to spell emission

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce emission

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emission mean?

1. nounThe act of giving off or releasing something such as gas, light, heat, or radiation, or the substance released.

Emission in a sentence

• The factory was fined for exceeding its permitted carbon emission levels.

• New engines are designed to cut every emission of harmful exhaust.

Where does emission come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin emissio, meaning 'a sending out' or 'a discharge', which was built on the verb emittere 'to send out'. That verb combines the prefix ex- 'out' (reduced to e- before certain consonants) with mittere 'to send', a root that English speakers meet again in everyday relatives such as 'mission', 'transmit', 'permit', and 'submit'. English adopted emission in the early 1600s, at first for the broad idea of giving off or releasing something, before it settled into its modern technical uses for gases, light, radiation, and financial issues of currency or shares. The double s is the spelling trap: it comes directly from the Latin participial stem missus 'sent', the same source as the double s in 'mission'. Remembering that emission is literally something 'sent out' from the mitt- root helps fix both the single m and the double s.

How the word is built

• e- (variant of ex-: out)
• miss (from mittere: to send)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)