Heated

How to spell heated

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce heated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does heated mean?

1. adjectiveMade or kept warm by a source of heat.
2. adjectiveMarked by strong anger, passion, or excitement.

Heated in a sentence

• The hotel has a heated pool that stays open all winter.

• The meeting ended after a heated exchange between the two managers.

• Luxury cars often come with heated seats for cold mornings.

• A heated debate broke out over the budget cuts.

Where does heated come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English noun hǣtu and the verb hǣtan, both rooted in hāt, meaning 'hot'. The whole family belongs to the Germanic stock of English, and close cousins survive in Dutch hitte and German Hitze, all carrying the basic idea of high temperature. The form 'heated' is simply the verb 'heat' with the ordinary past-participle ending '-ed', and from medieval times it described anything that had been made warm. The figurative sense, an argument or temper made 'hot' with anger, developed naturally by extension, since rising emotion has long been pictured as rising warmth. The spelling is gently deceptive: the long 'ee' sound is written 'ea', the same vowel pairing seen in 'meat' and 'beat', so writers must remember it is not 'heeted'.

How the word is built

• heat (from Old English hǣtu, warmth)
• -ed (adjective/past-participle suffix)