Regretted

How to spell regretted

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce regretted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does regretted mean?

1. verbFelt sorrow or disappointment over something that happened or a choice that was made.

Regretted in a sentence

• She regretted selling the family house the moment the new owners moved in.

• He regretted not booking the flights earlier when the prices doubled.

Where does regretted come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of 'regret', which English took from the Old French verb regreter, meaning 'to bewail' or 'to lament the dead'. The earlier part of that French word is uncertain, but many scholars trace the -greter element to a Germanic root tied to weeping and crying out, related to Old Norse grata, 'to weep', so the original force was a genuine wail of grief rather than mild disappointment. English adopted the verb in the 1300s, at first for sorrowing over a loss or a death, and the meaning softened over the centuries into the everyday sense of wishing something had not happened. The spelling trap lives in the past tense: because the verb ends in a single stressed vowel plus a single 't', that final consonant doubles before -ed, giving 'regretted' rather than 'regreted'. The same doubling rule explains 'preferred' and 'occurred', so remembering the family helps lock in the second 't'.

How the word is built

• re- (intensive/back)
• gret (root from Old French regreter: to lament)
• -t- (doubled consonant)
• -ed (past tense)