Detected

How to spell detected

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce detected

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does detected mean?

1. verbDiscovered or noticed the presence of something, often something hidden, subtle, or not immediately obvious.

Detected in a sentence

• The alarm detected a small amount of smoke in the kitchen.

• Auditors detected a discrepancy in last month's accounts.

Where does detected come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb detegere, which literally meant 'to uncover' or 'to lay bare', formed from the prefix de- carrying a sense of reversal or removal and the verb tegere, meaning 'to cover'. The past participle stem detect- gave rise to the late Latin detectus, and English adopted the verb 'detect' in the fifteenth century, at first with the literal idea of exposing or revealing something hidden, such as uncovering a crime or a secret. Over time the meaning narrowed toward the modern sense of noticing or discovering the presence of something not obvious. The same tegere root that means 'to cover' also sits inside everyday words like 'protect' (cover in front of) and 'integument', the biological covering of a body. The form 'detected' is simply the regular past tense, and its spelling is reassuringly phonetic once you remember the doubled 'ct' cluster at the heart of the word.

How the word is built

• de- (un-, reversal)
• tect (from Latin tegere: to cover)
• -ed (past tense suffix)