Endowed

How to spell endowed

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce endowed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does endowed mean?

1. verbNaturally possessing a quality, ability, or feature, as if given it as a gift.
2. verbProvided with money, property, or a permanent source of income.

Endowed in a sentence

• She is endowed with a remarkable memory for names and dates.

• The new research centre was generously endowed by a private foundation.

• The valley is richly endowed with fertile soil and fresh water.

• The chair of history is fully endowed and pays the professor's salary each year.

Where does endowed come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Latin verb dotare, meaning 'to provide with a dowry', which was built on the noun dos (genitive dotis), the dowry or marriage gift, itself closely related to dare, 'to give'. Old French reshaped the verb as endouer, combining the prefix en-, used here to mean 'to put into' or 'to make', with douer, 'to give'. English took the word up around the 1300s, at first in the literal legal sense of granting property or income to a person or institution. From there the meaning broadened gracefully: a college could be endowed with money, and by extension a person could be endowed with talents, beauty, or good sense, as though nature had handed them out as gifts. The same dos root survives in 'dowry' and 'dower', and remembering that family helps explain why the middle of endowed sounds and looks the way it does.

How the word is built

• en- (to make, to put into)
• dow (from Old French douer 'to give', from Latin dotare 'to provide a dowry')
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)