Bent

How to spell bent

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bent

What does bent mean?

1. adjectiveCurved or angled, no longer straight.
2. verbThe past tense and past participle of bend, meaning curved or stooped.
3. nounA natural talent or strong inclination toward something.

Bent in a sentence

• adjective

  The bent nail would not go cleanly into the wood.

• verb

  She bent down to pick up the dropped coins.

• noun

  She has a real bent for solving complex puzzles.

• adjective

  He straightened the bent spokes on the old bicycle wheel.

• verb

  The storm bent the young trees almost to the ground.

• noun

  His artistic bent showed early in his careful sketches.

Where does bent come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grew directly out of the native English verb bend, which comes from the Old English bendan, meaning 'to bring into tension' or 'to constrain', as one does when stringing a bow. That older sense was tightly linked to bands and bowstrings: to bend a bow was to pull its string taut, and the same root sits behind the word band. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from drawing a bow to curving anything out of a straight line, and bent settled in as its past form, much as send gives sent and lend gives lent. From the literal idea of a curved shape, English speakers developed the figurative noun sense of a personal 'bent', a natural leaning or inclination in a particular direction. Because it is an old, short Germanic word with a clean spelling, the chief thing to remember is simply the -nt ending shared with its cousins sent and lent.

How the word is built

• bent (past tense and past participle of the verb bend, from Old English bendan)