Lined

How to spell lined

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lined

What does lined mean?

1. adjectiveMarked with printed or drawn lines, or fitted with an inner layer of material.
2. verbPast tense of 'line': arranged along a line, or covered the inner surface of something.

Lined in a sentence

• adjective

  She wrote her notes neatly on lined paper.

• verb

  Spectators lined the route long before the parade began.

• adjective

  The jacket was lined with fleece and kept him warm on the hike.

• verb

  She lined the drawer with fresh paper before storing the cutlery.

Where does lined come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense and adjectival form of 'line', which traces back to the Latin linea, meaning a string, cord, or row, itself derived from linum, the word for flax or linen, since early lines were threads spun from flax. The sense travelled into Old English and Old French as a word for a cord stretched taut, and from there grew into the many modern meanings: a drawn mark, a row of people, a written row of text, and the verb meaning to arrange in a row. A separate but related strand gave us 'line' in the sense of covering an inner surface, originally with linen cloth, which is why a coat can be 'lined'. The two strands sit close together in spelling, and the simple '-ed' ending here causes few problems, though writers occasionally double the consonant by mistake. The shared flax root also survives in 'linen' and 'linseed'.

How the word is built

• line (from Latin linea, a string or row)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)