Ranked

How to spell ranked

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce ranked

What does ranked mean?

1. verbHeld or assigned a particular position in an ordered list according to quality, value, or status.
2. adjectiveHaving an assigned place in a graded order, especially a high one.

Ranked in a sentence

• verb

  The team ranked third in the league at the end of the season.

• adjective

  She applied to a highly ranked law school in the city.

• verb

  Reviewers ranked the hotels by cleanliness and price.

• adjective

  The top ranked candidate accepted the job offer first.

Where does ranked come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'rank', which English took from the Old French word 'renc' or 'ranc', meaning 'a row' or 'a line of people'. The Old French term was itself borrowed from a Frankish (Germanic) root related to 'hring', the ancestor of the modern word 'ring', carrying the idea of people or things arranged in a circle or line. In English the noun first described soldiers standing in orderly rows, which is still why we speak of 'the ranks' in an army. From the sense of an ordered line came the sense of position in a hierarchy, and by extension the verb meaning to place items in order of value or status. The '-ed' ending here is the ordinary regular past inflection; the spelling trap is that the hard 'k' sound is written 'k' before the suffix, not a soft 'c', and the 'nk' must not be doubled.

How the word is built

• rank (a row, line, or grade)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)