Submitting

How to spell submitting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce submitting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does submitting mean?

1. verbPresenting a document, application, or piece of work to someone for consideration or approval.
2. verbYielding to or accepting the authority, control, or demands of another.

Submitting in a sentence

• She spent the afternoon submitting her tax return before the deadline.

• The company avoided a lawsuit by submitting to the regulator's terms.

• The deadline for submitting a grant application is the end of March.

• Rather than fighting the decision, the staff began submitting to the new rules.

Where does submitting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of the verb 'submit', which English took from the Latin verb submittere, formed from sub meaning 'under' and mittere meaning 'to send' or 'to let go'. The literal idea was 'to send or place under', and in classical and medieval Latin it stretched to cover lowering, yielding, and placing oneself beneath another's authority. English borrowed it in the late 1300s, at first in the sense of 'to surrender' or 'to make oneself subject to' a power or ruling. The modern office meaning, 'to hand something in for consideration', grew naturally out of presenting a matter to a higher authority for judgement. The same mittere root, meaning 'to send', also gives us 'transmit', 'permit', and 'mission', and the spelling trap here is purely mechanical: a single short stressed syllable 'mit' doubles its final t before -ing, so the form is 'submitting', not 'submiting'.

How the word is built

• sub- (under)
• mit (from Latin mittere: to send)
• -t- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (present participle)