Resigned

How to spell resigned

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce resigned

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does resigned mean?

1. verbPast tense of resign: voluntarily left a job, office, or position.
2. adjectiveAccepting something unwelcome or unavoidable without protest.

Resigned in a sentence

• verb

  The finance director resigned after the audit revealed the losses.

• adjective

  He gave a resigned sigh when the train was delayed again.

• verb

  Three board members resigned in protest over the merger.

• adjective

  After months of rejection letters, she felt resigned to a long search.

Where does resigned come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb resignare, which literally meant 'to unseal' or 'to cancel', formed from the prefix re-, meaning 'back', and signare, meaning 'to mark or seal' (the same root that gives us 'sign' and 'signature'). In Roman use, to unseal a document was to annul it or hand something back, so the word carried a sense of formally giving up a claim. English took it through Old French resigner in the late 1300s, first meaning to surrender or relinquish a position or right. The familiar emotional sense, calmly accepting something unwelcome, grew naturally from the idea of giving oneself up to a fate. The silent g, kept from signare, is the spelling trap: it is heard in relatives like 'signal' and 'signature' but vanishes in the spoken form of 'resigned'.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• sign (from Latin signare, to mark or seal)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)