Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Omission for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Welcome. Today's word is 'omission' — a noun.
Narrator: Pronounced oh-MISH-un, IPA /əˈmɪʃ.ən/.
Narrator: An omission is something that has been left out — the act of omitting, or the thing itself that was omitted.
Narrator: From Latin omissio, from omittere — ob, away, and mittere, to send. Literally something sent away.
Narrator: In law, an act of omission — failing to do something required — can be just as culpable as active wrongdoing.
Narrator: In writing, an omission is an error of exclusion — a word or fact that should be present but isn't.
Narrator: A lie of omission means telling only part of the truth, leaving out what would change everything.
Narrator: Register is formal — used in legal, editorial, academic, and administrative contexts.
Narrator: What is not said can be just as powerful as what is.
Speaker A: My manager flagged a glaring omission in my report — I'd forgotten the budget breakdown.
Speaker B: Classic omission — not wrong in what it says, but incomplete in what it doesn't.
Speaker A: Is there a difference between omission and oversight?
Speaker B: Oversight implies accidental omission — you didn't notice. Omission is neutral — deliberate or accidental.
Speaker A: And a lie of omission?
Speaker B: Telling only the facts that suit you, leaving out the ones that don't. Recognised in ethics and law.
Speaker A: Any spelling traps?
Speaker B: Only one m — not ommission. And don't confuse it with emission — emission is sent out; omission is left out.
Speaker B: Today we use 'omission' in AI prompts for validation, auditing, and completeness tools.
Speaker A: Omission is perfect when you want the AI to find what's missing rather than what's wrong.
Speaker B: Five prompts.
Speaker A: So 'omission' in a prompt means: find what's missing, flag it, and track it until resolved.
Omission — meaning in Arabic & definition More O courses GL Dictionary