Shaded

How to spell shaded

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shaded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shaded mean?

1. verbPast tense of shade: screened or sheltered from direct light or heat.
2. adjectiveSheltered from or partly blocked from direct sunlight.
3. verbPast tense of shade: filled in an area of a drawing with darker tones.

Shaded in a sentence

• verb

  The broad oak shaded the picnic table all afternoon.

• adjective

  They parked in a shaded corner of the lot to keep the car cool.

• verb

  He shaded the lower half of the sketch to suggest depth.

• verb

  A canvas awning shaded the cafe terrace from the midday glare.

• adjective

  The ferns thrive in the shaded part of the garden.

• verb

  The student carefully shaded each fold of the fabric in pencil.

Where does shaded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past form of the verb 'shade', which descends from the Old English noun sceadu, meaning 'shadow' or 'shelter from light'. That noun belonged to a wider family of Germanic words for darkness and shelter, and it originally described the cool, dim patch of ground that a tree or wall throws off when it blocks the sun. By the medieval period the noun had spawned a verb meaning 'to screen from light', and from there English speakers added the regular -ed ending to form 'shaded'. The same root also gives us 'shadow', which kept an extra syllable because it grew from an inflected form of the very same Old English word. Later artists borrowed the verb for the technique of darkening parts of a drawing, so 'shaded' came to describe pencil work as well as cool spots under trees.

How the word is built

• shade (from Old English sceadu: shadow, shelter from light)
• -ed (past tense / participle suffix)