admission
Pluraladmissions (some meanings)
- 1Permission to enter a place, or the act or fact of entering; admittance or access.
Admission to the gallery's evening events is restricted to invited guests.
Foreign journalists were denied admission to the briefing.
Similaradmittance, access, entry, entrance
Oppositeexclusion
Note
The plural turns permission into a head count. Used uncountably, admission is the right to go in, something you request or are denied. But cinema admissions are individual entries, tallied the way Mark Sweney tallied them in 2020 when the pandemic pushed UK figures toward their lowest since records began. That plural counts people through the door, not money; the price of entry is the admission fee.
- 2
- 3The granting of a point or argument not fully proved; the act of acknowledging something asserted; a concession.
His admission that the data were incomplete weakened the committee's confidence in the report.
Accepting her rival's main premise felt like an admission of defeat.
Similaracknowledgment, concession, confession, acceptance
Oppositedenial
- 4The act or practice of admitting; the granting of entry or acceptance.
Her admission to the hospital took less than an hour.
The country's admission to the trade organization required years of negotiation.
Similarentry, admittance, acceptance, accession
Note
The noun behind admit, borrowed from Latin admissio; French has the same word. It carries two ideas that the other senses pull apart: letting someone in, which leads to entry and access, and accepting a claim, which leads to conceding a point. Here it is the process itself, as in admission to hospital or to an organization.
- 5A fact, point, or statement that has been admitted or acknowledged as true.
The letter contained a damaging admission about the company's finances.
Jurors weighed his offhand admission against his later denials.
Similarconfession, acknowledgment, disclosure, revelation
Oppositedenial
Note
Here the word names the statement itself, something that can be carried into court. Admissions made out of court are received in evidence and can generally be used against the party who made them. Countable and concrete, as in a damaging admission or an offhand admission, it is the thing said, while the act of conceding is the saying.
- 6Acquiescence in or agreement with a statement made by another person; distinguished from a confession, which may be made without any prior inquiry.
Under the detective's questioning, his admission confirmed the timeline of events.
The plaintiff's lawyer read the defendant's admission into the record during the deposition.
Similaracknowledgment
Oppositedenial
Note
Lawyers draw the line by who speaks first. An admission answers someone else's inquiry, such as a question or an assertion put to the party, and the party goes along with it. It may also concede only particular facts, where a confession acknowledges guilt outright. So a suspect can admit being at the scene without confessing to anything.
- 7A bishop's declaration approving a presentee as a fit person to serve the cure of the church to which he or she is presented.
The vicar took up his duties only after admission by the bishop of the diocese.
Following admission, the new rector was instituted and inducted into the parish.
Note
A step in British church law for filling a parish: a patron presents a candidate, the bishop declares him fit, and only then come institution and induction into the benefice. Admission is the bishop's approval, and without it the presentee cannot take up the cure of the church.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from Latin admissio (admissionis), related to the verb admit; compare French admission.