Viewed

How to spell viewed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce viewed

What does viewed mean?

1. verbPast tense of view: to have looked at, watched, or inspected something.
2. verbPast tense of view: to have regarded or considered something in a particular way.

Viewed in a sentence

• The couple viewed three flats before choosing the second one.

• His colleagues viewed the proposal as a serious risk to the budget.

• Millions viewed the broadcast on the night of the final.

• The panel viewed her experience as a strong advantage.

Where does viewed come from?

Language of origin: French

The word derives from the Old French veue, meaning 'a sight' or 'an act of seeing', which itself came from the verb veoir, 'to see'. That French verb traces back to the Latin videre, meaning 'to see', the same root that gives English 'video', 'vision', and 'evident'. English adopted 'view' as both a noun and a verb during the late Middle Ages, around the 1400s, first for the act of looking and the scene beheld, and later for the figurative sense of an opinion or way of regarding something. The past-tense form 'viewed' simply adds the regular -ed ending; the spelling trap is the silent-looking 'iew' cluster, where the 'i' before 'ew' is easy to drop or reorder. Because the same 'iew' sits inside 'review' and 'preview', remembering one steadies the spelling of all three.

How the word is built

• view (from Old French veue: a seeing, sight)
• -ed (past tense suffix)