Routed

How to spell routed

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce routed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does routed mean?

1. verbPast tense of route: directed or sent along a particular path or channel.
2. verbPast tense of rout: defeated an opponent so thoroughly that they scattered or collapsed.

Routed in a sentence

• The courier routed every parcel through the regional depot.

• The home side routed their rivals by forty points in the cup final.

• The network engineer routed all the traffic away from the failing server.

• The incumbent party was routed at the polls, losing nearly every seat.

Where does routed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This spelling sits on top of two closely related words that both trace back to the Latin verb rumpere, meaning 'to break'. The networking and travel sense descends from 'route', which English took from the Old French rute, itself a shortening of the Latin phrase rupta via, literally a 'broken way', that is, a path forced or beaten through wild country. The military sense descends from 'rout', meaning a crushing defeat, which came through Old French route in the sense of a disorderly band or scattered troop, again from that same rupta idea of something broken apart. English absorbed both during the medieval period, and because they share an ancestor they ended up looking almost identical on the page. The lingering -e of 'route' and the way 'rout' and 'rooted' sound so similar in speech are exactly why this little past-tense form trips writers up.

How the word is built

• rout(e) (a way or course)
• -ed (past tense suffix)

Words that sound like routed

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

• rooted: Firmly fixed in place, or deeply and permanently established.