Starred

How to spell starred

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce starred

What does starred mean?

1. verbPast tense of 'star': to have played the leading role in a film, play, or show.
2. adjectiveMarked or decorated with a star symbol or asterisk, often to show importance.

Starred in a sentence

• verb

  She starred in three major films before turning thirty.

• adjective

  Each starred item on the menu is the chef's personal recommendation.

• verb

  The actor starred opposite a famous comedian in the new comedy.

• adjective

  The starred paragraphs in the contract require the client's initials.

Where does starred come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the inflected form of the verb 'star', which grew out of the noun 'star', a thoroughly native English word descending from Old English 'steorra', meaning the bright point of light in the night sky. That word goes back to a shared Germanic ancestor, related to Dutch 'ster' and German 'Stern', and ultimately to the same ancient root that gave Latin 'stella' and Greek 'aster', both also meaning star. By the sixteenth century 'star' had taken on a figurative sense for a person of dazzling brilliance, and from the nineteenth century it described the leading performer in a play or, later, a film; 'starred' is the natural past tense and participle of that theatrical verb. The same root sense also produced 'starred' as an adjective for anything marked or decorated with a star shape or an asterisk. The spelling trap is purely mechanical: because 'star' ends in a single consonant after a short stressed vowel, that r doubles before the ending, giving 'starred' rather than the wrong 'stared', which is an entirely different word meaning to gaze.

How the word is built

• star (celestial body / leading performer)
• -ed (past tense and adjective suffix), with the final r doubled after a short stressed vowel