Admissibilities

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The qualities or conditions that make something acceptable or allowable in a particular context or situation
2. The state of being qualified to be included or considered within a specified set or rule
3. Criteria or factors that validate whether an item or evidence can be entered into a formal process or debate

Etymology: "Admissibilities" is simply the plural of "admissibility," the state of being admissible. The noun's core is "admissible," which comes from the Latin verb "admittere," "to let in" or "to allow entrance," so the sense of letting something through a gate is built into the word from the start. The plural form is the one you need when several distinct criteria are meant at once, as in the rules a court or debate uses to decide which evidence gets in. The ending does the grammatical work. "Admissibility" was formed in English by taking "admissible" and adding "-ity," a suffix that turns an adjective into a noun for a quality, much as "ability" comes from "able" and "possibility" from "possible." The suffix itself travels a long road: it descends from Latin "-itās" by way of Old French "-ité," entered Middle English as "-ite," and settled into the modern "-ity" spelling in English. Its ancestry runs far back into Indo-European, but in practice the word was assembled from parts English already had.