Dedicated

How to spell dedicated

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce dedicated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dedicated mean?

1. adjectiveDevoting a great deal of time and energy to a particular cause, activity, or purpose.
2. adjectiveSet aside exclusively for a single function or purpose.
3. verbPast tense of dedicate: devoted time or effort to something, or formally inscribed a work to someone.

Dedicated in a sentence

• adjective

  The clinic relies on a small team of dedicated volunteers.

• adjective

  The company runs its database on a dedicated server.

• verb

  The author dedicated her first novel to her late father.

• adjective

  She is a dedicated nurse who rarely misses a shift.

• adjective

  The office has a dedicated phone line for customer complaints.

• verb

  He dedicated years of his life to restoring the old barn.

Where does dedicated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb dedicare, which meant to proclaim something solemnly or to set it apart for a sacred purpose. It was built from the prefix de-, here adding a sense of completeness, and dicare, meaning to declare or devote, a cousin of dicere, to say or speak. In Roman use a temple or altar could be dedicare to a god, meaning it was publicly declared as belonging to that deity. English took the word in during the fifteenth century, first in the religious sense of consecrating, and later broadened it to mean committing oneself wholeheartedly to a person, cause, or task. The same dic root surfaces in everyday relatives such as dictate and predict, all carrying the old idea of speaking or proclaiming, and the single d in the middle (one c, no doubling) is the small spelling point worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• de- (down, completely)
• dic (from dicare: to proclaim, devote)
• -ate (verb suffix)
• -ed (past/adjective ending)