submit

As we see in our Behind The Word on transfer, submit is an excellent example of how Latin roots can be found all over English vocabulary.

Submit entered English around 1325–75. The word is ultimately derived from the Latin submittere, meaning “to lower, reduce, yield.” This Latin verb is composed of two parts. The first part is sub-, a combining form based on the preposition sub, meaning “under, below.” The second part is mittere, a verb meaning “to send,” often with the sense of “letting (something) go.” Fun fact: another sense of submittere in Latin was “to let grow,” as one does with their hair.

Some of the most common senses of submit in English are “to turn in,” as one submits a homework assignment or document, and “to give in,” as one submits to the will of another.

Back to the Latin roots. Latin combined mittere with a variety of its own prefixes to form new verbs, many of which made their way into English in the 1300s.

• admit (from Latin admittere, literally “to send to”; see ad-)
• commit (from Latin committere, literally “to send with”; see com–)
• demit (from Latin dēmittere, literally “to send down”; see de–)
• emit (from Latin ēmittere, literally “to send out”; see e–)
• intermit (from Latin intermittere, literally “to send between”; see inter–)
• intromit (from Latin intrōmittere, literally “to send in”; see intro–)
• omit (from Latin omittere, with a literal meaning of, roughly, “to send in the way of”; see o-)
• permit (from Latin permittere, literally “to send through”; see per–)
• pretermit (from Latin praetermittere, literally “to send past”; see preter–)
• remit (from Latin remittere, literally “to send back”; see re–)
• transmit (from Latin trānsmittere, literally “to send across”; see trans–)

Now, for sub-. Too many words to list here feature the prefix sub-, either as borrowed from Latin or formed in English. Below are just a few examples. Can you think of more?

• subatomic
• subliminal
• submarine
• submerge
• subside
• subterranean
• substitute

Dig deeper

Many other English words contain sub-, but you might not know it at first glance. That’s due to a process called assimilation, which is when a sound becomes the same as or similar to a neighboring sound.

Before sp, sub- becomes su–, as in suspect. Before c, sub- becomes suc–, as in succeed. Sub- becomes suf- before f (suffer), sug- before g (suggest), and sum– before m (summon). And just to be absolutely thorough, sub- becomes sup- before p, as in suppose, and sur- before r, as in surrogate.

The Latin verb mittere shows up in many other English words, such as missile and mission. Without getting too far into the grammar weeds, those double s’s (as opposed to the double t’s we see in mittere) are based on the past participle form of the verb: missus, “(a) sent (thing).” This is why the noun form of submit is submission—and admission for admit, permission for permit, and so on.