Reputed

How to spell reputed

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce reputed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reputed mean?

1. adjectiveGenerally said or believed to be something, on the basis of common report rather than proven fact.

Reputed in a sentence

• The reputed owner of the company has never been seen at the office.

• He is the reputed author of several anonymous articles.

Where does reputed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb reputare, which meant 'to count up', 'to reckon', or 'to think over'. It was formed from the prefix re-, used here as an intensifier, joined to putare, meaning 'to reckon, consider, or think', the same root that also gave English 'compute', 'dispute', and 'impute'. Interestingly, putare originally carried the sense of 'to prune or clear away', so the idea grew from clearing the mind to settling an account in one's thoughts. English took the word in through Old French reputer in the late Middle Ages, and by the 1500s 'repute' and its participle 'reputed' were used to mean 'considered to be' on the basis of common report rather than proven fact. That sense of something widely supposed but not certainly known is exactly what 'reputed' still conveys, and the single 't' before the -ed (rather than a doubled one) is the small spelling point worth remembering.

How the word is built

• re- (intensive, from Latin re-)
• put (to reckon, to think)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)