Rooted

How to spell rooted

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rooted

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rooted mean?

1. adjectiveFirmly fixed in place, or deeply and permanently established.
2. verbPast tense of root: rummaged or searched by turning things over, as a pig digs in soil.

Rooted in a sentence

• adjective

  She stood rooted to the spot when the alarm went off.

• verb

  He rooted through the drawer looking for the spare keys.

• adjective

  His fear of flying is rooted in a childhood accident.

• verb

  The dog rooted around in the garden until it found the buried bone.

Where does rooted come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word is built on the noun and verb 'root', which comes from late Old English 'rot', itself borrowed from Old Norse 'rot', meaning the buried part of a plant that anchors it and draws up water. The Norse word traces back to the same ancient source as the Latin 'radix', meaning 'root', which gives us 'radish' and 'radical', so all of these distant cousins share the idea of something growing from a fixed base. By adding the regular '-ed' ending, English formed both the past tense of the verb (the plant rooted in the soil) and an adjective sense (firmly fixed or established). Over centuries the figurative meaning grew alongside the literal one, so a belief or a fear could be 'rooted' just as a tree is. The double 'o' simply preserves the long vowel of 'root', and the main spelling pitfall is keeping it distinct from the unrelated 'routed', which describes sending something along a route or defeating an army.

How the word is built

• root (from Old English rot: the underground part of a plant)
• -ed (past tense / past participle / adjective suffix)

Words that sound like rooted

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• routed: Past tense of route: directed or sent along a particular path or channel.