Hated

How to spell hated

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hated mean?

1. verbPast tense of hate: felt a strong dislike of or hostility towards someone or something.
2. adjectiveRegarded with intense dislike; detested.

Hated in a sentence

• verb

  She always hated the long commute into the city.

• adjective

  The new parking charges were the most hated policy in the town.

• verb

  He hated filling in tax forms every spring.

• adjective

  That hated rival firm undercut every bid they made.

Where does hated come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'hate', which descends directly from the Old English hatian, meaning 'to treat as an enemy' or 'to regard with hostility'. That verb grew from the noun hete, the same ancestor of modern 'hate', and it belongs to a wider Germanic family that includes the Old Norse hata and the German Hass, all carrying the idea of strong dislike or enmity. The spelling trap here is small but real: the silent 'e' of 'hate' is dropped before the '-ed' ending, so the word is 'hated' rather than the doubled or 'e'-keeping forms some writers reach for. Because the root vowel stays long, the single 't' is correct; doubling it would signal a short vowel, as in 'hatted'. The word has carried roughly the same meaning for over a thousand years, which is rare for such an emotionally charged term.

How the word is built

• hate (from Old English hatian: to detest)
• -ed (past tense suffix)