Learned

How to spell learned

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce learned

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does learned mean?

1. verbPast tense of learn: gained knowledge or a skill through study or experience.
2. adjectiveHaving or showing deep, scholarly knowledge acquired through long study.

Learned in a sentence

• verb

  She learned French during her year abroad.

• adjective

  The journal published a learned article on medieval trade routes.

• verb

  He only learned the truth about the merger after he resigned.

• adjective

  She gave a learned lecture that drew professors from three universities.

Where does learned come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English verb leornian, which meant to study, to read, or to gain knowledge, and which sat close to the related leeran, to teach. The root is the same Germanic source that gives modern German lernen, to learn, and it carries an old sense of following or tracing a track, the idea being that a learner follows the path of knowledge. As a past-tense form, learned has competed with the shorter learnt for centuries, with learnt favoured in British usage and learned dominant in American usage, though both remain correct. A separate adjective grew out of the same verb, describing a person who has acquired deep knowledge, and this scholarly sense is pronounced as two syllables. That split pronunciation is the main reason the single spelling causes confusion, since the eye sees one word but the mouth produces two different shapes.

How the word is built

• learn (Old English leornian: to gain knowledge)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)