Seated

How to spell seated

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce seated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does seated mean?

1. adjectivePlaced or resting in a seat; sitting down.

Seated in a sentence

• The audience remained seated until the final speaker had finished.

• Guests were seated at long tables for the wedding dinner.

Where does seated come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word grows from the noun and verb 'seat', which English took from Old Norse sæti, meaning 'a place to sit' or 'the act of sitting'. That Norse word shares a common Germanic ancestor with the everyday verb 'sit', both tracing back to a root meaning simply 'to settle down'. By the 1200s 'seat' was firmly established in English for a chair, a bench, or the place where someone settles, and the verb 'to seat' (to place someone in a seat) followed naturally. Adding the regular '-ed' ending produced 'seated', used both as a past form and as a description of someone resting in a seat. The 'ea' spelling, which sounds like a long 'ee', is the only real trap here, since the word is otherwise built from a familiar root and a plain suffix.

How the word is built

• seat (a place to sit, from Old Norse sæti)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)