Formatted

Part of speech: verb, adjective

Definitions

1. Prepared a storage medium by erasing it and setting up its structure so it can hold data ; arranged text, documents or data into a particular layout or style
2. Erased a disk or drive and set up its file structure for storage ; organized written content or information into a specific visual arrangement
3. Wiped and readied a digital storage device so it can record information ; shaped the appearance and arrangement of text or data according to a set pattern

Etymology: "Formatted" is the past tense and past participle of "format", so its history is that of the verb. The verb traces back to the Latin phrase "liber formatus", meaning "book fashioned" or "book shaped", which referred to the size and shape a book was made to, such as a folio or quarto. "Formo", the Latin verb meaning "to shape or fashion", gives the root. The phrase passed into French and German as "format" with the sense of a book's size and layout, and English later borrowed the word from those languages. The sense of "preparing a disk" is a much later extension, reflecting the idea of shaping a blank storage medium into a structured arrangement that a computer can use. The word had long meant the physical dimensions of a printed book, so the computing use carries that same notion of giving something a defined shape before content goes into it.

Synonyms: structured, arranged, organized

Antonyms: unformatted