Listened

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈlɪsn̩d/

Definitions

1. To have directed one's awareness towards sounds or voices To have engaged meaningfully in the perception of auditory signals To have made a conscious effort to understand auditory communication or expressions
2. To have focused attention on sounds or voices around oneself
3. To have actively heard and processed auditory information

Etymology: "Listened" is simply the past tense of "listen," so its story is really the story of the verb. The most surprising part is that "listen" once meant something closer to "hear" than to deliberately paying attention. Its ancestor, Old English "hlysnan," traces back to a Germanic root that connects it to "loud." The same ancient root gave rise to the Welsh "clywed" ("to hear") and the Latin "clueō" ("to be famous"), which shows how closely hearing and fame were once linked in the Indo-European imagination. Over the centuries, the verb's spelling shifted. Middle English "listnen" and "listenen" were altered under the influence of the existing Middle English word "listen," meaning "to give heed," which is where the modern form comes from. The word is related to German "lauschen," which likewise means to listen closely, often in secret.

Synonyms: heard, attended, observed

Antonyms: ignored, overlooked, dismissed