Guarded

How to spell guarded

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce guarded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does guarded mean?

1. adjectiveCautious and reluctant to give information or reveal feelings.
2. verbWatched over or protected something in the past, or kept it from harm.

Guarded in a sentence

• adjective

  The chief executive remained guarded about the company's plans for the merger.

• verb

  Two officers guarded the entrance to the building all night.

• adjective

  She gave a guarded reply when reporters asked about her finances.

• verb

  The dog guarded the family home while they were away on holiday.

Where does guarded come from?

Language of origin: French

The base word guard came into English in the 1400s from the Old French verb garder, meaning 'to watch over, keep, or protect'. That French verb was itself built on a Germanic root warden, the same ancestor that gave English the native word 'ward'. This is why guard and ward are essentially the same word arriving by two different routes: the Germanic 'w' sound turned into the 'gu' spelling as it passed through Old French, which is exactly the spelling trap here, since the silent 'u' after the 'g' looks unnecessary but signals the French route. By the 1500s guard had taken on its modern military and protective senses, and the form guarded developed both as the past tense of the verb and as an adjective meaning careful or cautious, as if a person were keeping their feelings under protection. The figurative 'cautious' sense, recorded from the 1700s, draws directly on that image of holding something defensively close.

How the word is built

• guard (from Old French garder: to watch, protect)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)