Landed

How to spell landed

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce landed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does landed mean?

1. verbCame down onto a surface, arrived on the ground, or succeeded in obtaining something.
2. adjectiveOwning a large amount of land, especially as a source of wealth or status.

Landed in a sentence

• verb

  The plane landed ten minutes ahead of schedule.

• adjective

  The estate had belonged to a landed family for centuries.

• verb

  She landed a senior role after months of interviews.

• adjective

  Members of the landed gentry rarely worked the fields themselves.

Where does landed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the native English noun 'land', which descends from Old English 'land', meaning 'ground', 'soil', or 'a defined territory'. That noun has deep Germanic roots, with close relatives such as Dutch 'land' and German 'Land', and it originally carried the sense of solid earth as opposed to water or sea. The verb 'to land', meaning to come to rest on the ground or to bring something ashore, grew out of the noun in the medieval period, and its past tense and past participle were formed simply by adding the regular '-ed' ending. The same '-ed' also produced an adjective meaning 'owning land', which gave us familiar phrases like 'landed gentry'. Because 'land' is such a plain, everyday root, the spelling is straightforward; the only point to watch is keeping the single 'd' of the root and adding just '-ed', rather than doubling the consonant.

How the word is built

• land (ground, earth, to come to ground)
• -ed (past tense / adjectival suffix)