Recommended

How to spell recommended

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce recommended

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recommended mean?

1. verbPast tense of recommend: put forward as worthy of acceptance, trust, or use, or advised as a good course of action.
2. adjectiveOfficially advised or endorsed as the preferred option.

Recommended in a sentence

• verb

  The consultant recommended a complete overhaul of the payroll system.

• adjective

  The recommended daily dose is printed on the side of the box.

• verb

  A colleague recommended that small hotel near the station.

• adjective

  Always stay within the recommended speed for that stretch of road.

Where does recommended come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past form of 'recommend', which English assembled in the late 1300s from the Medieval Latin recommendare. That verb joined the intensive prefix re- to commendare, meaning 'to entrust' or 'to commit to someone's care', which itself was built from com- 'with' and mandare 'to put into someone's hand, to order'. So at heart the word literally meant to entrust something or someone warmly to another person, and from that grew the modern sense of praising a thing as worthy of trust or of advising a course of action. The same mandare root sits inside 'mandate' and 'command', which is a useful reminder that the middle of the word is spelled m-m-e-n-d, not -mend like fixing a sock. The real spelling trap is the single c against the doubled m: it is one c at the start (re-c) but two m's in the middle (-comm-).

How the word is built

• re- (intensive prefix)
• com- (with, together)
• mend (from Latin mandare: to entrust, commit)
• -ed (past tense suffix)