omit

The word 'omit' originates from the Latin verb omittere, which is a compound of the prefix ob- (here meaning "away") and the verb mittere ("to send, let go"). The literal sense was "to send away, to let go, to lay aside." This concrete meaning evolved through Late Latin and Anglo-French before entering Middle English. Over time, the action of "letting something go" or "laying it aside" became abstracted to the modern sense of intentionally or accidentally leaving something out or failing to perform an action. The semantic logic connects the ancient idea of sending something away to the contemporary concept of exclusion or neglect.