Undertaken

How to spell undertaken

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce undertaken

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does undertaken mean?

1. verbPast participle of undertake: having committed to or begun a task, responsibility or course of action.

Undertaken in a sentence

• The company has undertaken a full review of its safety procedures.

• No major repairs had been undertaken on the roof in years.

Where does undertaken come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past participle of the verb 'undertake', which was assembled in Middle English around the thirteenth century from two older Germanic pieces. The first part, 'under', is the native Old English preposition meaning 'beneath' or 'among', and here it carries the figurative sense of taking something on, of shouldering it. The second part, 'take', came into English from the Old Norse 'taka', meaning 'to grasp, seize or accept', a word the Vikings left behind and which gradually replaced the older native verb 'niman'. Joined together, 'undertake' came to mean to take a task upon oneself or to commit to doing something, and the participle 'undertaken' follows the same strong pattern as 'taken', 'shaken' and 'forsaken', adding the old -en ending rather than a regular -ed. That strong-verb ending is the only mild trap in the spelling, since the -en is unstressed and easily slurred in speech.

How the word is built

• under- (beneath, taking on)
• take (root: to grasp, accept)
• -en (past participle suffix)