Attracted

How to spell attracted

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce attracted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does attracted mean?

1. verbPast tense of attract: drew someone or something nearer, or drew their interest, notice, or affection.

Attracted in a sentence

• The new museum exhibit attracted thousands of visitors over the weekend.

• The bright porch light attracted a swarm of insects after dark.

Where does attracted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'attract', which comes from the Latin verb attrahere, meaning literally 'to draw toward'. That verb combined the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'toward' (which softened to 'at-' before the 't'), with trahere, meaning 'to draw or pull'. The same trahere root pulls its weight inside a whole family of English words, including 'tractor', 'extract', 'contract' and 'subtract', all of which involve some kind of dragging or drawing. English took up 'attract' in the early 1500s, first in the sense of physically drawing things together, as a magnet draws iron, and the figurative sense of drawing someone's interest or affection followed soon after. The doubled 't' that trips up spellers is a fossil of that buried prefix: the 'd' of ad- assimilated into the following 't', leaving 'att-'.

How the word is built

• at- (toward, from Latin ad-)
• tract (to draw or pull)
• -ed (past tense)