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spoken

UK/ˈspəʊ.k(ə)n/US/ˈspoʊ.kən/
adjectiveB1Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,536 of 15,258neutral

Spoken means said aloud rather than written down. The spoken word, spoken English, softly spoken.

Spoken language came first by a hundred thousand years and writing is the newcomer, which is why linguists treat speech as the primary form and writing as a record of it. Spoken English differs from written English in grammar as well as vocabulary. Note well spoken, meaning speaking in a prestige accent, which is a social judgement.

Definitions of spoken

  1. 1adjectivespokenSaid aloud rather than written down.B1

    “Her spoken English is excellent, even though she has never lived abroad.”

spoken is a quality of speech.

Where it comes from

The past participle of speak, from Old English sprecan. The r dropped out of the word in Middle English.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *spey-

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *spaikō

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *spaikā

  4. Old English

    spāca

  5. Middle English

    spoke

  6. English

    spoke

  7. English, today

    spoken

Morphologically spoke + n. spoke comes from Middle English spoke, from Old English spāca, from Proto-West Germanic spaikā, from Proto-Germanic spaikō. Compare Scots spaik (“spoke”), Dutch spaak and spike.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

spoken in the wild

  • Arabic is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world.

    Arabic

  • Meanwhile, in Francophone Africa it is spoken mainly as a second language or lingua franca, though it has also become a native language in a several urban areas.

    French language

  • German is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe.

    German language

  • Hindi is the fourth-most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, Spanish, and English.

    Hindi

  • According to reports of Ethnologue, Hindi is the third most-spoken language in the world when including first and second language speakers.

    Hindi

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the spāca family

spoken

spoken — used about once every 167 pages · #1,536 · point at the bar for the others