Inclined

How to spell inclined

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce inclined

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inclined mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a tendency or willingness to do or think something.
2. adjectiveSloping or set at an angle rather than level.

Inclined in a sentence

• After the long week, she felt inclined to stay home and rest.

• The gently inclined driveway made it hard to park the trailer.

• Most of the committee seemed inclined to approve the budget.

• The patient rested on an inclined bed to ease her breathing.

Where does inclined come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb inclinare, which combined the prefix in-, meaning 'towards', with clinare, meaning 'to lean or bend'. The literal sense was therefore 'to lean towards something', a physical image of bending in a particular direction. English took it up through Old French encliner in the 1300s, and from the start it carried both the concrete meaning of a sloping surface and the figurative meaning of a mind that leans towards a choice or opinion. The same clinare root quietly underlies a family of relatives such as 'decline', 'recline', and even 'climate' (originally the slope of the earth towards the poles). The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle: the 'cl' and the silent ending hold steady while writers sometimes hesitate over whether it ends in -ined.

How the word is built

• in- (towards)
• clin (from Latin clinare: to lean or bend)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)