-ed
/d//ɪd/
-ed suffix: used to form past tenses of (regular) verbs. In linguistics, it is used for the base form of any past form. See -t for a variant.
Suffix (1)
-ed
- Used to form past tenses of (regular) verbs. In linguistics, it is used for the base form of any past form. See -t for a variant.
- live + -ed → lived
- Once upon a time a little princess lived with her mother in a lonely castle.
Suffix (2)
-ed
Suffix (3)
-ed
- Used to form possessional adjectives from nouns, in the sense of having the object represented by the noun.
- point + -ed → pointed
- horn + -ed → horned
- Antonyms:
- -less
- As an extension of the above, used to form possessional adjectives from adjective-noun pairs.
- red + hair + -ed → red-haired
- left + hand + -ed → left-handed
-ed meaning in Persian and Vietnamese
-ed in Persian
- past tense
- ـده -de, ـد -d, ـته -te, ـت -t
- having an object
- ـدار -dâr
-ed in Vietnamese
- past tense
- đã
More languagesFewer languages
- Dzongkha
- ཅི ci
Antonyms of -ed
Forms of -ed
| alternative form | -d |
|---|---|
| alternative form | -'d |
| alternative form | -èd |
Origin of -ed
From Middle English -ede, -ed. During the Middle English period, this increasingly standard -ed ending largely absorbed the class 1 weak past ending (-de) through morphological leveling. However, many class 1 verbs resisted this leveling to become modern irregular verbs (such as kept and left). This resistance was driven by phonotactics: attaching the consonant suffix directly to the stem often triggered pre-cluster vowel shortening (and consonant devoicing) in Early Middle English, creating a stark vowel alternation between the present and past tense that anchored the irregular form. Conversely, verbs that lacked this stark alternation (such as deem, where the early past tense demde remained insufficiently distinct from the present stem) were highly vulnerable to leveling, adopting the syllabic -ed to ensure the past tense was clearly marked. In modern usage, this morphological leveling has proceeded further in American English than in British English, which frequently preserves the irregular -t variant for such verbs. Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *-ōd-. Cognate with Saterland Frisian -ede (“-ed”, first person singular past indicative ending), Low German -de (“-ed”, first and...
From Middle English -ed, from the merger of Old English -od (class 2 weak past participle) and -ed (class 1 weak past participle), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *-ōdaz and *-idaz respectively. Cognate with Saterland Frisian -ed.
From Middle English -ed, from Old English -od (adjective suffix), from Proto-Germanic *-ōdaz, from Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂tos. While identical in appearance to the past participle of class 2 weak verbs, this suffix was attached directly to nouns without any intervening verb. Cognate with Latin -ātus (whence also a doublet -ate), Proto-Slavic *-atъ.
Questions about -ed
- What does -ed mean?
- -ed means used to form past tenses of (regular) verbs. In linguistics, it is used for the base form of any past form. See -t for a variant.
- What is -ed in Persian?
- -ed in Persian is ـده (-de), ـد (-d), ـته (-te). See -ed meaning in Persian.
- What part of speech is -ed?
- -ed is a suffix.
- How do you pronounce -ed?
- -ed is pronounced /d/.
Words near -ed in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: -ed (page history and authors). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl--ed.wav.
Cite this entry: “-ed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.