Chartered

How to spell chartered

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chartered

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chartered mean?

1. adjectiveOfficially qualified or recognised by a professional body that holds a royal or formal charter.
2. verbPast tense of charter: hired a vehicle such as a boat or aircraft under a formal agreement.

Chartered in a sentence

• adjective

  She hired a chartered accountant to review the company books.

• verb

  The firm chartered a private jet to fly the team to the conference.

• adjective

  The bridge was inspected by a chartered engineer before reopening.

• verb

  They chartered a fishing boat for the weekend trip along the coast.

Where does chartered come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin charta, which meant a sheet of papyrus or paper, and by extension the official document written upon it. Latin borrowed charta from the Greek khartes, a leaf of papyrus used for writing. The word travelled into English through Old French chartre, a written deed or grant of rights, arriving in the medieval period when monarchs literally issued charters to towns, guilds, and companies. From the noun came the verb 'to charter', meaning to grant rights by such a document, and later to hire something under a formal agreement, as one charters a ship or plane. The form 'chartered' is simply that verb with the ordinary -ed ending, and the same charta root survives in everyday relatives such as 'card', 'chart', and 'cartoon', which is worth remembering because the silent first 't' (char-TER-ed) is exactly where the spelling can slip.

How the word is built

• charter (from Latin charta: a sheet of paper or formal document)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)