Understood

How to spell understood

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce understood

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does understood mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of understand: to have grasped the meaning or significance of something.
2. adjectiveTacitly agreed or implied without being openly stated.

Understood in a sentence

• verb

  She understood the instructions and finished the form without help.

• adjective

  It was understood that everyone would cover the cost equally.

• verb

  Once he understood the contract terms, he signed it gladly.

• adjective

  The deadline was an understood part of the arrangement.

Where does understood come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of 'understand', which comes straight from the Old English verb understandan. The literal sense was something like 'to stand among' or 'to stand in the midst of', from under, which in this old construction carried the meaning 'among' or 'between' rather than simply 'beneath', plus standan, 'to stand'. The idea seems to be that to grasp a thing is to stand close to it or in the middle of it, taking its full measure. The past form 'understood' follows the same vowel-shifting pattern as 'stand' becoming 'stood', a pattern inherited from the strong verbs of early Germanic speech. That irregular vowel change, where 'stand' loses its 'a' and gains a doubled 'oo', is the small spelling point worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• under- (among, beneath)
• stood (past tense of stand, from Old English standan)