Sent

How to spell sent

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sent

What does sent mean?

1. verbPast tense of 'send': caused something or someone to be dispatched or conveyed to a destination.

Sent in a sentence

• She sent the invoice by email this morning.

• The office sent a courier to collect the documents.

Where does sent come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'send', which comes from the Old English sendan, meaning 'to cause to go' or 'to dispatch'. That verb traces back to a shared Germanic root reconstructed as sandjan, related to old words for a journey or a way, so the original idea was literally 'to make something travel'. The strong, irregular past form gave us 'sent', losing the 'd' of 'send' and gaining a 't' ending much as 'bend' becomes 'bent' and 'lend' becomes 'lent'. English has used both forms continuously for well over a thousand years. The spelling trap is purely acoustic: 'sent' sounds identical to 'cent', the hundredth of a dollar, and to 'scent', a smell, so the meaning of the sentence is the only guide to which one is correct.

How the word is built

• sent (past tense and past participle of 'send', from Old English sendan)

Words that sound like sent

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

• cent: A unit of money equal to one hundredth of a dollar or euro, or the small coin of that value.
• scent: A distinctive smell, especially a pleasant one, or the trail of smell left by a person or animal.