Seeded

How to spell seeded

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce seeded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does seeded mean?

1. verbPast tense of seed: sowed seeds in soil or scattered them over an area.
2. adjectiveRanked and placed in a tournament draw so that the strongest competitors do not meet too early.
3. adjectiveEither sprinkled or filled with seeds, or having had its seeds taken out.

Seeded in a sentence

• verb

  The farmer seeded the back field with winter wheat in October.

• adjective

  The top seeded player was knocked out in the first round by a newcomer.

• adjective

  She bought a seeded loaf dusted with sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

• verb

  Volunteers seeded the bare hillside to stop the soil washing away.

• adjective

  Two seeded teams were drawn into the same group, guaranteeing an early clash.

• adjective

  The recipe calls for seeded grapes so there are no pips in the salad.

Where does seeded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word seed descends from the Old English sǣd, meaning 'that which may be sown', which in turn grew from the ancient Germanic root that also gave us the verb 'to sow'. That same root stretches back to a Proto-Indo-European source meaning 'to scatter' or 'to plant', so the literal idea inside the word is grain cast onto the ground. English has used 'seed' since well before the Norman Conquest, and the inflected form 'seeded' simply adds the regular past tense and adjective ending -ed. Over the centuries the word branched out from farming into figurative uses: a tournament organiser 'seeds' players by spacing the strongest ones apart in a draw, much as a gardener spaces out plants. The chief spelling trap is its homophone 'ceded' (from Latin cedere, 'to yield'), which sounds identical but has no connection at all; remembering the double 'e' that ties it to 'seed' keeps the two apart.

How the word is built

• seed (from Old English sǣd: that which is sown)
• -ed (past tense / past participle / adjective suffix)