Etymologically
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ammettere

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Pronunciation

  • /amˈmet.te.re/[1]

Forms

ammettere (first-person singular present ammétto, first-person singular past historic ammìsi, past participle ammésso, auxiliary avére)[1] Old Italian forms with a Latinizing ⟨dm⟩, such as admettere, are spellings of the humanists.[2][3]

Etymology

DELI, Nocentini and DEI treat it as a learned word, borrowed from Latin admittere (“to let in, admit; to grant”), with its stressed vowel taken from the native mettere.[4][5][6] The Latin verb is a compound of ad (“to, towards”) and mittō (“to send”).[4][7][8] The LEI and Wiktionary instead place the Italian verb among the inherited outcomes of the Latin verb, and DEI considers the old Sienese hunting sense “to set a dog on (game)” popular, matching the Latin sense “to send, drive against”.[2][1][6] The Latin verb also survives in Old Occitan ametre, Old French ametre (“to accuse”) and French admettre.[2][5]

De Vaan derives mittō from Proto-Italic *meit-e/o-, from a root Proto-Indo-European *m(e)ith₂- (“to exchange, remove”): from “exchange” it came to mean “give” and then “let go, send”.[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Storie de Troia e de Roma, a Roman text of 1252–1258, with the sense “to let in (a place), to receive”.[3] Zingarelli dates the verb to 1258, and GRADIT gives Iacopone, before 1306, for the sense “to recognize as true”.[10][11][4]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian had a wider set of senses: in law, “to give a hearing, allow to appear in court”;[3] “to admit to an office or to the members of a guild”;[3] “to turn towards, direct”; and in hunting, “to unleash or set on a dog”.[3] Poliziano still describes hunters of whom one già 'l suo ammette, chi 'l richiama (“one already looses his dog, one calls it back”).[11][10]

The sense “to let enter” was common from Cavalca (before 1342), and the participle ammesso, “accepted, judged fit”, from Giovanni Morelli (before 1444).[4] The concessive phrase ammesso che “granted that” is recorded in 1688, and esame d'ammissione, the entrance exam, in 1865.[4] Today the main senses are “to let in or accept”, “to allow” (often in the negative: non ammettere repliche) and “to acknowledge, own up to”.[11][12][7]

Timeline

  • 1252–1258 – Storie de Troia e de Roma uses the verb for “to let in”.[3]
  • Before 1306 – Iacopone uses it for “to recognize as true”.[4][11]
  • 1588 – Ammissibile is recorded in Lionardo Salviati.[4]
  • 1635 – Ammissione appears.[4]
  • 1688 – The phrase ammesso che “granted that” is recorded.[4]
  • 1965 – Ammettenza, the electrical admittance, is recorded.[4]

Meanings

Verb

  1. (transitive) To let in, to admit; to accept into a group, or to declare someone eligible for an exam or course: Lo hanno ammesso al corso di laurea.[11][12][13]
  2. (transitive) To allow, to tolerate: Il regolamento non ammette eccezioni.[11][12][7]
  3. (transitive) To acknowledge as true, to own up to: Ha ammesso di aver sbagliato i conti.[11][7][10]
  4. (transitive) To suppose, assume for the sake of argument: Ammettiamo che il treno arrivi in orario.[11][13][8]
  5. (obsolete) To set dogs on game in hunting.[11][10][8]

Word family

  • ammesso
  • ammissione
  • ammissibile
  • ammissibilità
  • inammissibile
  • ammettenza
  • riammettere

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Pfister, Max; Schweickard, Wolfgang; Prifti, Elton (eds.) (1979–), Lessico Etimologico Italiano, Wiesbaden: Reichert; online at lei-digitale.it, p. 1, 754
  3. ^ a b c d e f Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  5. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
  6. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 167
  7. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
  8. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
  9. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  10. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
  12. ^ a b c Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
  13. ^ a b Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana