Disputed

How to spell disputed

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disputed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disputed mean?

1. adjectiveSubject to disagreement or doubt; not settled or accepted by everyone.
2. verbArgued against or questioned the truth, fairness, or validity of something.

Disputed in a sentence

• adjective

  The disputed border has caused tension between the two countries for decades.

• verb

  She disputed the extra charges that appeared on her phone bill.

• adjective

  Ownership of the disputed painting will be decided in court.

• verb

  The lawyers disputed every claim the witness made.

Where does disputed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin verb disputare, which combined dis-, meaning 'apart' or 'in different directions', with putare, meaning 'to reckon, calculate, or think over'. Quite literally it described the act of 'reckoning things out' between people, working through a question by weighing opposing accounts. The verb passed into Old French as desputer, used for formal argument and scholarly debate, and English borrowed it in the 1200s, at first often in the religious sense of debating doctrine. Over time the noun and verb settled into the modern senses of questioning, contesting, or quarrelling over something. The same putare root surfaces in a surprising family of English words, including 'compute', 'reputation', and 'amputate', so the single 't' before the ending is the spelling worth remembering, since there is no doubling.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart, in different directions)
• put (from Latin putare: to reckon, think, reckon up)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)