Transferred

How to spell transferred

11 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce transferred

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transferred mean?

1. verbMoved someone or something from one place, person, or account to another.

Transferred in a sentence

• The bank transferred the funds to her savings account overnight.

• He was transferred to the London office after the merger.

Where does transferred come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'transfer', which traces back to the Latin verb transferre, meaning literally 'to carry across'. It was built from trans, meaning 'across' or 'beyond', and ferre, meaning 'to carry' or 'to bear', a very productive root that also underlies words like 'refer', 'infer', and 'fertile'. English took the word in the late 1300s, partly through Old French transferer and partly straight from the Latin, first in senses involving conveying property, rights, or persons from one place or owner to another. The modern past form doubles its final r, giving 'transferred', because the stress in 'transfer' falls on the last syllable, and English convention doubles a final consonant before -ed when a stressed final syllable ends in a single vowel plus consonant. That stress-driven doubling is the whole spelling trap: 'offered' and 'suffered' keep one r because their stress is earlier, but 'transferred' and 'referred' take two.

How the word is built

• trans- (across)
• fer (from Latin ferre: to carry, bear)
• -red (-ed past tense, with the final r doubled)