Debated

How to spell debated

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce debated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does debated mean?

1. verbDiscussed or argued a question formally, weighing opposing points of view.
2. adjectiveSubject to ongoing argument or disagreement; contested.

Debated in a sentence

• verb

  The council debated the proposed budget for three hours.

• adjective

  The true cause of the outage remains hotly debated among the engineers.

• verb

  The candidates debated tax policy on live television.

• adjective

  That figure is widely debated by economists who question the data.

Where does debated come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of 'debate', which English took from the Old French verb 'debatre', meaning to fight or contend. That French word was built from the prefix 'de-', here acting as an intensifier meaning 'thoroughly' or 'down', and the verb 'batre', meaning 'to beat' or 'to strike', which descends from the Late Latin 'battere', a variant of classical Latin 'battuere', 'to beat'. The original sense in the 1300s was quite physical, describing actual fighting or quarrelling, before it softened into the modern idea of arguing a question with words. The same 'battere' root beats away inside relatives such as 'battle', 'combat', and 'batter'. The single 't' in the spelling reflects that French ancestry, and the -ed simply marks the regular past tense, so there is no doubled consonant to worry about.

How the word is built

• de- (down, thoroughly)
• bat (from battere: to beat, fight)
• -ed (past tense suffix)