Omitted

How to spell omitted

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce omitted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does omitted mean?

1. verbPast tense of omit: left out or failed to include something.

Omitted in a sentence

• The auditor noticed that two invoices had been omitted from the report.

• He omitted his middle name when filling in the visa form.

Where does omitted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'omit', which English took directly from the Latin verb omittere, meaning 'to let go' or 'to lay aside'. That verb was formed from the prefix ob-, here carrying the sense of 'away' or 'down', joined to mittere, the great Latin verb meaning 'to send' or 'to let go'. Over the assimilation of ob- before the m, the b dropped away, leaving the single m you see today, which is exactly why writers must resist doubling it. English adopted the word in the fifteenth century with the meaning 'to leave out' or 'to fail to do', and that sense has held steady ever since. The same mittere root also gives English a large family of relatives such as 'mission', 'transmit', 'permit' and 'admit', all sharing that idea of sending. The spelling trap lives at the other end: 'omit' keeps a single t, but when stress falls on the final syllable the t doubles in 'omitted' and 'omitting'.

How the word is built

• o- (from Latin ob-, 'towards, away')
• mit (from mittere, 'to send, let go')
• -ted (past tense suffix with doubled t)