Transmitting

How to spell transmitting

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce transmitting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transmitting mean?

1. verbSending out a signal, message, or something else from one place or person to another.

Transmitting in a sentence

• The station was transmitting live coverage of the match.

• The device kept transmitting data back to the central server.

Where does transmitting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of 'transmit', which English took directly from the Latin verb transmittere. That verb joins trans, meaning 'across' or 'over', with mittere, meaning 'to send' or 'to let go', so the literal sense is 'to send across'. English adopted it in the 1400s, first for the idea of passing something on, such as property, a disease, or a message, from one person or place to another. When radio and telegraphy arrived, the word found its modern home in the sending of signals through the air. The same mittere root sits inside many familiar relatives like 'mission', 'permit', and 'submit', and it explains the doubled t in 'transmitting': the stress falls on the final syllable of 'transmit', so the consonant doubles before the ending, the same way it does in 'committing' and 'permitting'.

How the word is built

• trans- (across)
• mit (send, from Latin mittere)
• -ing (present participle, with the final t doubled)