Continued

How to spell continued

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce continued

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does continued mean?

1. verbKept on doing something or carried on without stopping, in the past.

Continued in a sentence

• The meeting continued long after the lunch break.

• She continued working despite the noise from the street.

Where does continued come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'continue', which English took from the Old French 'continuer' in the 1300s. That French verb descended from the Latin 'continuare', meaning 'to join together' or 'to make uninterrupted', built on 'continuus', meaning 'uninterrupted' or 'hanging together'. At the heart of it all sits the Latin verb 'tenere', meaning 'to hold', so the literal idea is of things being held together without a break. The same 'tenere' root surfaces in a wide family of English words including 'tenant', 'tenure', 'retain', and 'detain'. The '-ed' ending here is the regular weak past-tense marker, and the only mild spelling trap is the silent 'ue' before it, since the word keeps the full 'continue' spelling rather than dropping the 'e'.

How the word is built

• con- (together/intensive)
• tin (from tenere: to hold)
• -ue
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)