Word.ws English Dictionary

deserved

Syllables: de·servedUK/dɪˈzɜːvd//dɪˈzɝvd/

deserved adjective: fair; merited. Also the simple past and past participle of deserve.

Adjective

deserved (comparative more deserved, superlative most deserved)

  1. Fair; merited.
    • But though he thus abstained from power, his eldest son, the present Lord Morpeth, as Secretary for Ireland at a critical period, acquired a higher reputation and a more deserved popularity than any statesman who ever held that office.1846, William Cooke Taylor, The National Portrait Gallery of Illustrious and Eminent Personages, Chiefly of the Nineteenth Century, page 34
    • When the victim fails or refuses, the punishment is perceived as being more deserved.1992, Scott Daniel Corey, Strength of the Pack: Revolution and Threat Management, page 36
    Antonyms:
    undeserved

Also used as

deserved is also the simple past and past participle of deserve.

deserved meaning in Bengali and Malayalam

deserved in Bengali

প্রাপ্য

deserved in Malayalam

അർഹനായി

Examples of deserved in a sentence

  • Floris grumpily yammered on about how the actors hardly deserved to be plaudited.
  • The farmers had to revolt against the government to get what they deserved.
  • Your lecture deserved a much better reception than it got. Pearls before swine!

All 40 example sentences with deserved

Antonyms of deserved

Forms of deserved

comparativemore deserved
superlativemost deserved

Words formed from deserved

Phrases with deserved

Questions about deserved

What does deserved mean?
Deserved means fair; merited.
What is deserved in Bengali?
Deserved in Bengali is প্রাপ্য. See Deserved meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is deserved?
Deserved is an adjective.
How do you pronounce deserved?
Deserved is pronounced /dɪˈzɜːvd/ (UK).

Words near deserved in the dictionary

  1. desertworthy
  2. deserty
  3. deserv'd
  4. deservant
  5. deserve
  6. deserved
  7. deservedly
  8. deservedness
  9. deserveless
  10. deserver
  11. deservers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deserved (page history and authors); deserved (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); deserved (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-deserved.ogg.

Cite this entry: “deserved.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/deserved. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.