Involved

How to spell involved

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce involved

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does involved mean?

1. verbPast tense of involve: to include, engage, or draw something or someone into an activity or situation.
2. adjectiveDifficult to understand or do because of being complex and intricate.

Involved in a sentence

• verb

  The project involved months of careful planning before launch.

• adjective

  The tax form was far too involved to fill in without help.

• verb

  She involved the whole team in the final decision.

• adjective

  The plot of the novel grew increasingly involved in the later chapters.

Where does involved come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb involvere, which combined in- meaning 'in' or 'into' with volvere meaning 'to roll' or 'to turn'; literally it described wrapping or rolling something up inside something else. English borrowed it through Old French and Latin in the late 1300s, at first carrying that very physical sense of enveloping or entangling. Over time the idea of being wrapped up in something shifted into the figurative meanings we use today: to be caught up in an affair, to take part in an activity, or to be so intricately tangled that a matter becomes complicated. The same volvere root rolls through a whole family of relatives, including 'revolve', 'evolve' and 'volume' (originally a rolled scroll). Knowing that the heart of the word is volv, 'to roll', helps fix the spelling, since the single l and the v before the -ed are easy to slip on.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• volv (roll, turn, from Latin volvere)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)