Reverted

How to spell reverted

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce reverted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reverted mean?

1. verbReturned to a previous state, condition, practice, or topic.

Reverted in a sentence

• After the update failed, the team reverted to the older software version.

• Once the diet ended, she reverted to her usual eating habits.

Where does reverted come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'revert', which comes from the Latin verb revertere, built from re-, meaning 'back', and vertere, meaning 'to turn'. The literal sense was therefore 'to turn back', and that physical image of turning around survives in the modern meaning of returning to an earlier state, habit, or condition. English took the word in during the 1300s by way of Old French revertir, and it has carried the idea of going back ever since. The same vertere root powers a large family of English words, including 'convert', 'invert', 'divert', and 'reverse', all of which involve some kind of turning. Because the spelling keeps the clean re- prefix joined to the vert root, the only thing to watch is the single past-tense -ed ending rather than any doubling.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• vert (turn)
• -ed (past tense)