Amassed

How to spell amassed

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce amassed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does amassed mean?

1. verbGathered together or accumulated a large amount of something over time.

Amassed in a sentence

• Over three decades she amassed a small fortune in property.

• The collector amassed thousands of rare stamps before he retired.

Where does amassed come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of 'amass', which English took from the Old French verb 'amasser', meaning 'to heap up' or 'to gather into a pile'. That French verb was formed from the phrase 'a masse', combining 'a' (to) with 'masse' (a lump or heap), and 'masse' itself descends from the Latin 'massa', meaning a kneaded lump or dough. The Latin word was in turn borrowed from the Greek 'maza', the barley cake that gave the sense of something pressed together into a mass. English adopted 'amass' in the late 1400s, at first for piling up physical things and soon for accumulating wealth and quantities of anything. The single 'm' and the doubled 's' trace straight back to that 'masse' spelling, which is the detail that trips writers who expect a tidier word.

How the word is built

• a- (to, from Latin ad-)
• mass (a lump or heap)
• -ed (past-tense suffix)