Deemed

How to spell deemed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce deemed

What does deemed mean?

1. verbRegarded or judged something to be a particular way, as a matter of considered opinion.

Deemed in a sentence

• The committee deemed the proposal too expensive to pursue.

• The bridge was deemed unsafe and closed to traffic.

Where does deemed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English verb deman, meaning 'to judge, to pronounce a verdict, or to form an opinion'. That verb was built on the noun dom, meaning 'judgement' or 'decree', the same ancient root that survives in the modern word 'doom' and in the suffix '-dom' found in 'kingdom' and 'freedom'. In Anglo-Saxon England a 'deemster' was literally a judge, a title that lingered for centuries in the Isle of Man as 'deemster'. Over time the sense softened from delivering a formal legal ruling to simply considering or regarding something as true, so that today we speak of a request being deemed acceptable. The spelling keeps the long double 'e' from the Old English vowel, and the past form simply adds '-ed', giving the tidy 'deemed' that catches few people out.

How the word is built

• deem (from Old English deman: to judge, pronounce)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)