Choreographed

How to spell choreographed

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce choreographed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does choreographed mean?

1. verbDesigned and arranged the sequence of steps and movements for a dance or performance.
2. adjectiveCarefully planned and arranged so that every movement or action happens in a deliberate sequence.

Choreographed in a sentence

• verb

  She choreographed the entire wedding first dance in a single afternoon.

• adjective

  The protest looked spontaneous, but it was actually tightly choreographed.

• verb

  The director choreographed every fight scene before filming began.

• adjective

  Their kitchen ran like a smoothly choreographed machine during the dinner rush.

Where does choreographed come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word grows from the Greek khoreia, meaning 'a dance in a chorus or round', which itself goes back to khoros, the ring of singers and dancers in ancient Greek theatre. To that the Greeks could attach graphein, 'to write or record', and from this combination came the noun choreography, the writing down of dance. English assembled choreography in the early nineteenth century, and the back-formed verb choreograph (and its past form choreographed) followed naturally so that someone could be said to design and arrange the steps of a dance. The same khoros lurks inside the everyday word 'chorus', and the same graphein sits in 'photograph' and 'autograph', which is a useful reminder that the tricky middle of the word is the familiar -graph- root. The spelling trap is the opening 'choreo' cluster: the unstressed vowels and the silent feel of the 'eo' catch out even confident writers.

How the word is built

• choreo- (dance, from Greek khoreia)
• graph (write/record)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)