Slated

How to spell slated

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce slated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does slated mean?

1. verbPlanned or scheduled to happen at a particular time.
2. verbCriticised severely, especially in a published review.

Slated in a sentence

• The product launch is slated for early next month.

• The new restaurant was slated by reviewers for its slow service.

• The renovation work was slated to begin after the holidays.

• Critics slated the film for its weak plot and poor pacing.

Where does slated come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past form of the verb 'slate', which traces back through Middle English to the Old French 'esclat', meaning a splinter or a split-off piece of something. That word referred originally to the thin, flat fragments of grey rock that split cleanly along their natural layers, the very stone used to cover roofs and to make the writing tablets once carried in schools. From those writing tablets came a figurative leap: to 'slate' a person or thing was to set them down on the slate, that is, to list or schedule them, which is the dominant sense in American and Canadian use. In British English a separate colloquial sense developed in the nineteenth century, where to 'slate' meant to criticise harshly, as if scratching a damning note onto the slate. The shared spelling sits on the long 'a' of 'slate', so the trap is simply remembering the silent 'e' surfaces as the 'a' sound rather than as a separate syllable.

How the word is built

• slate (from Old French esclat: a split piece)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)