Spaced

How to spell spaced

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spaced

What does spaced mean?

1. verbPositioned items so that they are separated by regular intervals or gaps.
2. adjectiveFeeling dazed, distracted, or disconnected from your surroundings.

Spaced in a sentence

• verb

  The gardener spaced the seedlings a foot apart in each row.

• adjective

  After the overnight flight he felt completely spaced at the meeting.

• verb

  The chairs were spaced evenly along both sides of the hall.

• adjective

  The painkillers left her a little spaced for the rest of the afternoon.

Where does spaced come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of the verb 'space', which traces back to the Latin noun spatium, meaning a stretch, a distance, or an interval of room or time. Latin spatium passed into Old French as espace, and English borrowed it during the 1300s, at first simply as a noun for an extent or area. The verb sense, 'to arrange things with gaps between them', grew out of that noun much later, and adding the regular ending -ed gave the form 'spaced'. The same spatium root still shows itself in relatives like 'spatial' and 'spacious'. The spelling is straightforward once you remember it is just 'space' with -ed; the only thing to watch is that the final sound is a hard 't', yet it is still written -ed.

How the word is built

• space (room, interval)
• -ed (past tense / participle suffix)