Watered

How to spell watered

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce watered

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does watered mean?

1. verbPast tense of water: supplied a plant, animal, or area of ground with water.
2. verbPast tense of water (down): weakened a liquid by adding water, or made something less forceful.

Watered in a sentence

• She watered the tomato plants before leaving for work.

• The bar was accused of having watered the spirits to cut costs.

• The groundskeeper watered the cricket pitch at dawn.

• The editor watered down the strongest claims in the report.

Where does watered come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'water', which descends directly from the Old English 'wæter', a native Germanic word for the clear liquid that fills rivers and falls as rain. It belongs to a large family of related Germanic words, including the Dutch 'water' and the German 'Wasser', all reaching back to a reconstructed Proto-Germanic 'watar' and ultimately a Proto-Indo-European root meaning simply 'water' or 'to be wet'. The verb sense, 'to supply with water' or 'to moisten', was already in use in Old English, and the regular past form was made by adding the dental ending that became modern '-ed'. The spelling stays predictable here: the base word 'water' simply takes '-ed', so the only trap is remembering the single 't' rather than doubling it. The same ancient root also surfaces in 'wet', 'otter' (the water animal), and even 'winter', once thought of as the wet season.

How the word is built

• water (Old English wæter)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)