wondered

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of wonder.

   Many readers wondered how the story would end.

   We had often wondered about the empty house next door.

   Note

   One regular -ed spelling does double duty. It stands alone in the simple past and follows have or had in perfect forms. The verb's two meanings leave different traces after it. Amazement usually takes at (they wondered at the size of it). Pondering takes about, or a clause with how, why or whether (she wondered whether to stay).

2. 2
   adjectiveobsolete

   Wonderful or extraordinary; inspiring amazement.

   The wondred Argo, which in venturous peece / First through the Euxine seas bore all the flowr of Greece.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

   Note

   An -ed form that points outward: the thing described causes wonder rather than feeling it. Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590) has "the wondred Argo," the ship that first bore Greece's finest through the Euxine, spelled without the e. A modern reader would take it as the past tense of wondering, so keep it for deliberate imitation of older verse. Where it does appear, it compares with more and most.

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