Gathered

How to spell gathered

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce gathered

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does gathered mean?

1. verbBrought people or things together into one place, or collected something gradually.

Gathered in a sentence

• The whole family gathered in the kitchen for the announcement.

• Over the years she gathered a remarkable collection of vintage maps.

Where does gathered come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'gather', which descends directly from the Old English gaderian, meaning 'to bring together, unite, or collect'. That verb was built on the same root as the word 'together' and the old noun 'gad', referring to a group or fellowship, so the underlying idea has always been one of drawing separate things into a single mass. It belongs to the native Germanic layer of English and has close cousins in Dutch (gaderen) and the German prefix in 'zusammen'. The spelling kept its 'th' sound and the soft middle vowel through the centuries, and the trap for writers is the unstressed second syllable, which is pronounced as a vague schwa yet is still spelled '-er-' before the regular '-ed' ending. Because it is such an old everyday word, the past tense simply takes the standard '-ed', giving 'gathered' with a single 'r'.

How the word is built

• gather (Old English gaderian: to bring together)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)