Declared

How to spell declared

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce declared

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does declared mean?

1. verbAnnounced or stated something formally, openly, or officially.

Declared in a sentence

• The government declared a state of emergency after the flooding.

• She declared all her overseas earnings on the tax return.

Where does declared come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'declare', which comes from the Latin verb declarare, meaning 'to make thoroughly clear' or 'to reveal'. That verb was built from the intensifying prefix de- and the adjective clarus, which literally meant 'clear, bright, or shining'; the same clarus gives us 'clear', 'clarity', and the name Clara. English took the word in through Old French declarer in the fourteenth century, when it was used both for announcing something formally and for showing or proving something. Over time the formal sense of making an official statement, as in declaring war or declaring goods at customs, became the dominant meaning. The buried 'clar' is a useful spelling anchor: the word is about making something clear, so the 'a' belongs before the 'r', not after.

How the word is built

• de- (fully, thoroughly)
• clar (from Latin clarus: clear, bright)
• -ed (past tense suffix)