Patterned

How to spell patterned

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce patterned

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does patterned mean?

1. adjectiveDecorated with a repeated design rather than being plain.
2. verbModelled or shaped one thing after another as an example.

Patterned in a sentence

• adjective

  She chose a patterned wallpaper for the hallway.

• verb

  She patterned her management style on her former boss.

• adjective

  The patterned tie clashed with his striped shirt.

• verb

  The new tax system was patterned after a scheme used in Sweden.

Where does patterned come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past form and adjective derived from 'pattern', which arrived in English through Old French 'patron', meaning a patron, protector, or model to be copied. That French word came from the Latin 'patronus', a defender or master, built on 'pater', meaning 'father'. In medieval craft workshops, the patron was the original model a worker imitated, so the sense slid from 'protector' to 'a thing copied from'; the spellings 'patron' and 'pattern' eventually split apart in English during the 1500s, with 'pattern' keeping the 'thing to be copied' meaning. From that grew the modern senses of a repeated decorative design and the verb 'to pattern', meaning to model one thing on another. The doubled 't' and the unstressed second syllable (sounding like a faint 'er') are the parts writers slip on, since the ending swallows its vowel.

How the word is built

• pattern (a repeated design or model)
• -ed (adjective/past-tense suffix)