The English root mit and its variant miss comes from a Latin word that means ‘to send.’
When a lightbulb emits light, what does it do? It simply ‘sends it out.’ If you are out on a mission, you’ve been ‘sent’ to do a task. If, however, you’ve been dismissed from that endeavor, you’ve been ‘sent away.’ If someone permits you to do something, you are ‘sent through’ to carry on.
If you are confused by why mit and miss mean the same thing, just notice what happens when you add suffixes to the following mit words. Permit becomes permission, likewise emit becomes emission. Don’t “miss” that mit becomes a miss!
Have you ever omitted anything from a test? If so, you have ‘sent it away.’ When you submit your answers, you ‘send them under’ for the inspection of the teacher. Hopefully all those tests that you have submitted as a student will allow you to be admitted, or ‘sent to’ a good college!
Are you committed to anyone? If so, you have ‘sent together’ your life with another. And if you promise to love that person then you’ve sent forth your faithful love.
Every comic book villain tries his best to contribute wholeheartedly to the demise of his chosen superhero, that is, to his permanent ‘sending away,’ or ‘death;’ the words superhero and demise don’t go together very well. Dr. Octopus could never ‘send away’ Spiderman, at least on a permanent basis!
Has anyone ever been falsely submissive to you, seeming to ‘send’ himself ‘beneath’ your command? Have you ever tried to surmise, or ‘send over’ a guess about why someone is acting the way he does? Or have aliens attempted to transmit or ‘send across’ thoughts to you? Enough tranmission, or ‘sending across’ of questions!
Submit the handy root mit to your memory, promise to remember it, and you will never have to admit to not knowing it again!
- emit: ‘send out’
- omit: ‘send away’
- dismiss: ‘send away’
- permit: ‘send through’
- submit: ‘send under’
- commit: ‘send together’
- demise: ‘sent away’
- submissive: ‘send beneath’
- surmise: ‘send over’