Chatted

How to spell chatted

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chatted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chatted mean?

1. verbTalked in an easy, informal, friendly way.

Chatted in a sentence

• They chatted for an hour over coffee about the weekend.

• We chatted online while the slides were loading.

Where does chatted come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word 'chat' first appeared in English during the 1400s as a clipped, informal shortening of 'chatter', a word coined to imitate the rapid, light sounds of birds and idle human talk. 'Chatter' itself is echoic in origin, meaning the spelling and sound were built to mimic the noise being described rather than to descend from any older root word. As 'chat' settled into the language as a verb for casual, friendly conversation, it took regular verb endings, and because it ends in a single stressed vowel followed by a single consonant, the final 't' doubles before '-ed', giving 'chatted'. That doubling is the spelling trap: the same rule produces 'patted', 'fitted', and 'spotted', and it trips writers who instinctively want just one 't'. The word stayed firmly in the everyday, informal register, which is why it now also describes typing quick messages online.

How the word is built

• chat (root, shortened from chatter)
• -t- (doubled consonant)
• -ed (past tense suffix)