Emitted

How to spell emitted

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce emitted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emitted mean?

1. verbPast tense of emit: to have given off or sent out something such as light, heat, sound, gas, or a signal.

Emitted in a sentence

• The old boiler emitted a faint smell of gas before it failed.

• The factory emitted thick smoke during the night shift.

Where does emitted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb emittere, which meant 'to send out' or 'to let go', formed from the prefix ex- meaning 'out' and the verb mittere meaning 'to send'. The same mittere root sits quietly inside a large family of English words, including 'transmit', 'submit', 'permit' and 'mission', all of which carry a sense of sending. English took up 'emit' in the early 1600s, chiefly in scientific and technical writing about giving off heat, light, sound or gases. The past tense 'emitted' follows the regular English doubling rule: because the base word ends in a single stressed vowel plus a single consonant (em-IT), the final t is doubled before -ed. That doubling is the spelling trap, since the related noun 'emission' has a different consonant pattern and can pull writers toward the wrong number of letters.

How the word is built

• e- (variant of ex-: out)
• mitt (from Latin mittere: to send)
• -ted (past tense, with the t doubled after the stressed short vowel)