Staged

How to spell staged

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce staged

What does staged mean?

1. verbOrganised and presented an event, performance, or protest for the public.
2. adjectiveDeliberately arranged or set up to look genuine, often to deceive or to create an effect.

Staged in a sentence

• verb

  The union staged a walkout outside the factory gates.

• adjective

  The insurer suspected the accident was staged to collect a payout.

• verb

  The local theatre group staged a sell-out production last spring.

• adjective

  The photo looked staged rather than a candid moment.

Where does staged come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'stage', which grew out of the noun 'stage'. English took 'stage' from Old French 'estage', meaning a position, a storey of a building, or a place where one stands, and that French word descended from the Latin verb 'stare', meaning 'to stand', through an unrecorded Vulgar Latin form 'staticum' for a standing place. By the 1500s the noun had come to mean the raised platform on which actors stand to perform, and from there the verb developed, first meaning 'to put on a platform' and then 'to present a play before an audience'. From the theatre the verb broadened to cover organising any event or, more cunningly, arranging something so that it merely looks real. The single 'g' followed by 'ed' is the usual trap: the soft 'j' sound tempts writers toward a doubled letter or a stray 'd', but the base word is simply 'stage' with '-ed' added.

How the word is built

• stage (platform, scene of action)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)