Hunted

How to spell hunted

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hunted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hunted mean?

1. verbChased and tried to catch or kill an animal, or searched determinedly for something.

Hunted in a sentence

• The old farmer hunted foxes across the frozen fields each winter.

• She hunted through every drawer until she found the spare keys.

Where does hunted come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Hunted is the past tense of the verb hunt, which comes straight from the Old English huntian, meaning to chase or pursue wild animals for food or sport. That early verb is thought to be related to hentan, meaning to seize or to try to grasp, which neatly captures the idea of running something down and catching it. Unlike many English words that arrived through Latin or French, hunt is part of the native Germanic core of the language, so it has been spelled in much the same compact way for over a thousand years. The regular past tense was formed simply by adding -ed, and because the root ends in a single t, the spelling stays smooth with no doubling. Over the centuries the sense broadened from literally chasing game to any determined search, as in hunting for a job or hunting through a drawer, while the original meaning of pursuing animals survives intact.

How the word is built

• hunt (from Old English huntian: to chase game)
• -ed (past tense suffix)