Permission

How to spell permission

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce permission

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does permission mean?

1. nounFormal consent or authorisation allowing someone to do something.

Permission in a sentence

• The contractor needed written permission before starting the demolition.

• Staff must seek permission from a manager before approving a refund.

Where does permission come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin permissio, meaning 'a letting go' or 'a yielding', which was the noun formed from the verb permittere. That verb combined per-, meaning 'through' or 'thoroughly', with mittere, meaning 'to send' or 'to let go', so the literal idea was to send something through, that is, to let it pass. From the sense of letting something pass came the modern meaning of granting leave or formal consent. English took the word in during the late 1300s and early 1400s, partly through Old French permission and partly straight from the Latin. The same mittere root quietly powers a large family of English words such as 'mission', 'permit', 'submit' and 'transmit', and remembering that shared 'miss' element helps fix the double s in the spelling.

How the word is built

• per- (through, thoroughly)
• miss (from mittere: to send, let go)
• -ion (noun suffix)