Covered

How to spell covered

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce covered

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does covered mean?

1. verbPast tense of cover: placed something over a surface, or dealt with or paid for something.
2. adjectiveHaving something placed over the top, so as to be sheltered, hidden, or enclosed.

Covered in a sentence

• verb

  The insurance policy covered all the repair costs after the storm.

• adjective

  The patio is fully covered to keep diners dry in the rain.

• verb

  Fresh snow covered the entire garden overnight.

• adjective

  All the furniture in the empty house was covered with dust sheets.

Where does covered come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word 'cover' came into English in the 1200s from the Old French 'covrir', which in turn descended from the Latin 'cooperire', meaning 'to cover over completely'. That Latin verb joined 'co-', an intensifying prefix, with 'operire', meaning 'to close or shut'. The original sense was simply to lay something over a surface so as to hide or protect it, and from that grew the many figurative uses we have today, such as covering a cost, covering a topic, or covering a distance. The '-ed' ending is the regular English past-tense and participle marker, so 'covered' is built straightforwardly from the verb. Because the word is so common and entirely regular, its spelling rarely trips anyone up; the single point to watch is that the stressed first syllable sounds like 'cuv', yet it is still spelled with an 'o'.

How the word is built

• cover (from Latin cooperire: to cover over)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)