Allotted

How to spell allotted

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce allotted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does allotted mean?

1. verbGave out or assigned as a share, portion, or allowance of something.

Allotted in a sentence

• Each speaker was allotted ten minutes for the presentation.

• The council allotted funds to repair the local roads.

Where does allotted come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of the verb 'allot', which English assembled from the Old French verb 'aloter', meaning 'to divide by lot' or 'to assign a share'. The heart of the word is 'lot', a very old Germanic term for an object cast or drawn to decide a matter by chance, the same sense that survives in 'drawing lots'. Over time the idea shifted from leaving a decision to chance toward deliberately apportioning something, so by the time it settled into English in the late 1500s 'allot' meant simply to give out as a share. The prefix is a softened form of Latin 'ad-', meaning 'to' or 'toward', which is why a single 'd' became the doubled 'l' you see at the front. The real spelling trap, however, lives at the end: like 'fitted' and 'spotted', a short stressed vowel before a single consonant forces that consonant to double before '-ed', giving the doubled 't' in 'allotted'.

How the word is built

• al- (variant of ad-, meaning 'to')
• lot (a share or portion)
• -ted (past-tense ending with doubled consonant)