Emit

How to spell emit

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce emit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emit mean?

1. verbTo send out or give off something such as light, heat, sound, gas, or radiation.

Emit in a sentence

• Old diesel engines emit far more soot than modern ones.

• The smoke alarm will emit a loud beep when its battery runs low.

Where does emit come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Emit comes from the Latin verb emittere, formed from ex, meaning 'out', and mittere, meaning 'to send'. The literal sense was therefore 'to send out' or 'to let go forth', and the Romans used it of releasing arrows, dismissing soldiers, and pouring out liquids. English adopted the word in the early 1600s, at first chiefly in scientific and technical writing about releasing light, heat, sounds, or gases. The same mittere root sits inside a large family of English verbs such as transmit, submit, permit, and omit, all of which share the idea of sending something somewhere. Because that family keeps the single 't' before the ending, emit follows suit, and the trap is doubling it only when a suffix is added, as in emitted and emitting.

How the word is built

• e- (variant of ex-: out)
• mit (from Latin mittere: to send)