Enlisted

How to spell enlisted

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce enlisted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does enlisted mean?

1. verbJoined an armed service, or signed up formally for a cause or task; also signed someone else up.
2. adjectiveDescribing members of the armed forces who serve below commissioned officer rank.

Enlisted in a sentence

• verb

  He enlisted in the navy soon after leaving school.

• adjective

  The briefing was open to both officers and enlisted personnel.

• verb

  The charity enlisted dozens of volunteers for the weekend clean-up.

• adjective

  Pay scales differ between enlisted ranks and the officer corps.

Where does enlisted come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The verb 'enlist' was assembled in English in the 1690s from the prefix 'en-', meaning roughly 'to put on or into', and the noun 'list', which here means a roll or register of names rather than a casual jotting. That sense of 'list' came into English through French 'liste', which traced back to a Germanic root meaning a strip, border, or edge of cloth; a name written along such a strip became a 'list' of people. To enlist therefore literally meant to write a soldier's name onto the official military roll. The form 'enlisted' is simply the past tense and past participle, and over time it also hardened into an adjective describing service members below officer rank, those whose names sit on the enlistment roll. The single 'l' and the '-st' before the '-ed' are the parts that trip writers, since the spoken word can blur into a hard-to-hear cluster.

How the word is built

• en- (to put on/into)
• list (a roll or register of names)
• -ed (past-tense/participle suffix)