Other forms: admitted, admits, admitting
To admit something is to say out loud the thing you would rather not: that you were wrong, that you forgot, that it was you who finished the milk. You admit a mistake to your boss on a Monday morning and the whole business is over in ten seconds.
The grammar catches people out. You admit doing something, or you admit that you did it — never admit to do it. With to it wants a noun: he admitted to the theft. The other half of the word has nothing to do with guilt, because to admit is also to let in, which is why a sign says members only admitted, why a hospital admits a patient, and why the noun admission covers both a confession and the price of a ticket. I must admit is the small polite run-up English takes before saying something slightly rude.
1verbadmitTo agree that something bad or embarrassing is true.~43%
“He finally admitted that he had forgotten her birthday.”
2verballowTo allow somebody to come in.~17%
“Only ticket holders are admitted after seven.”
3verbtakeTo take somebody into a hospital, a school or an organisation.~40%
“She was admitted to hospital late on Tuesday night.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 100 sentences found in the wild and placed 87 of them on a sense (13 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: confess
Latin admittō meant to allow entrance — literally to send to, built on mittere, to send. The oldest sense of admit is the doorway one, and it is still there whenever a hospital admits a patient. Owning up came afterwards, and it is the same movement turned inwards: you stop holding the door shut and let the thing in.
Proto-Indo-European
*mey- (change)
Latin
admittō — to allow entrance, inlet
Old French
admettre
Middle English
admitten
English, today
admit
Built from
From Middle English admitten, amitten, borrowed from Old French admettre, amettre (“to admit”), from Latin admittō (“to allow entrance, inlet”) literally “to send to”, from ad- + mittere (“to send”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA