Other forms: accepted, accepting, accepts
To accept is to say yes to what is offered — a job, an invitation, an apology, a parcel at the door. It is the ordinary word and it is transitive: you accept something.
Two things trip learners. Accept and agree are not interchangeable: you accept an offer and agree to a plan, and you agree with a person. And accept and except are different words entirely — accept means take, except means leave out — and the confusion is one of the commonest in written English. Note that accept also means to acknowledge as true — I accept that it was my fault — which is a useful formal move in an argument.
1verbacceptTo say yes to something offered.
“She accepted the job the same afternoon.”
2verbacknowledgeTo acknowledge that something is true.
“I accept that we should have asked first.”
3verbgroupTo take somebody into a group.
“He was accepted by the university in March.”
4verbmachineOf a machine, to take a form of payment.
“The machine does not accept notes.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
accept is a way of taking what is offered.
Latin accipere is ad-, to, plus capere, to take — the same verb behind capture, capable and receive. To accept has always been to take something towards yourself, willingly, which is why an unwilling acceptance sounds like a contradiction.
Middle English
accepten
English, today
accept
Built from
From Middle English accepten. First attested about 1380. From Middle English accepten, borrowed from Old French accepter, or directly from Latin accepto (“receive”), frequentative of accipiō, formed from ad- + capiō (“to take”). Displaced native onfōn.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA