Polluted

How to spell polluted

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce polluted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does polluted mean?

1. adjectiveMade dirty, contaminated, or unsafe by harmful substances or waste.
2. verbPast tense of pollute: contaminated something with harmful or unclean matter.

Polluted in a sentence

• adjective

  The factory was fined for dumping waste into the polluted river.

• verb

  Decades of mining polluted the groundwater across the whole valley.

• adjective

  Residents complained that the air near the motorway was heavily polluted.

• verb

  The oil spill polluted miles of coastline before crews could contain it.

Where does polluted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb polluere, which meant 'to soil, to defile, or to make unclean'. That verb was built from an old prefix por- (a variant of pro-, 'forth') joined to a root tied to luere, 'to smear', and to lutum, the Latin word for 'mud' or 'mire'. The literal idea was therefore something physically smeared with filth, and the figurative sense of moral or religious defilement came along with it. English took the word in during the 1300s, first carrying that older sense of profaning something sacred, and the modern environmental meaning of fouling air, land, and water grew stronger only from the nineteenth century onward. The double 'l' in the middle is the usual spelling trap; it survives straight from the Latin polluere, so remembering the muddy lutum root can help fix it.

How the word is built

• pol- (from por-, an old variant of pro-, meaning 'forth')
• lut (from luere/lutum, to smear with mud)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)