Appointed

How to spell appointed

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce appointed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does appointed mean?

1. verbPast tense of appoint: to have officially assigned someone to a job, role, or position.
2. adjectiveFixed or arranged in advance, as in a set time or designated place.

Appointed in a sentence

• verb

  The board appointed a new chief executive after a long search.

• adjective

  The visitors arrived punctually at the appointed hour.

• verb

  She was appointed to the committee for a three-year term.

• adjective

  Please collect your parcel from the appointed pickup point.

Where does appointed come from?

Language of origin: French

This word goes back to the Old French verb apointer, which meant to arrange, to settle, or to bring to a point of agreement. That verb was built from the phrase a point, literally meaning to a point, where a came from the Latin ad meaning to or towards, and point traced back to the Latin punctum, a thing that had been pricked or a tiny dot. The underlying image is of bringing a matter to a single, agreed, fixed point. English adopted the verb appoint in the 1300s, first in the sense of arranging or deciding something, and later in the familiar sense of assigning a person to an office. The form appointed simply adds the regular -ed ending, and the doubled p is the spelling trap, a leftover of the assimilated Latin prefix ad- becoming ap- before the p of point.

How the word is built

• ap- (variant of ad-: to, towards)
• point (from Old French point, a dot or fixed spot)
• -ed (past tense / participle suffix)