Word.ws English Dictionary

becalmed

becalmed is the simple past and past participle of becalm.

Meaning of becalm

Verb

becalm (third-person singular simple present becalms, present participle becalming, simple past and past participle becalmed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To make calm or still; make quiet; calm.
    • […] there is neither house nor landes, nor great store of gold & siluer, nor honor and noblenes of blood, nor greatnes of office, and estate, nor the grace and vehemencie of speach, which doth so much lighten, and so sweetlie becalme the life of man, as an vndefiled conscience […]1589, John Clapham, transl., A philosophicall treatise concerning the quietnes of the mind, London: Thomas Newman
  2. (transitive) To deprive (a ship) of wind, so that it cannot move (usually in passive).
    • […] there we were becalmed the .xx. day of Nouember from .vi. of the clocke in the mornynge vntyll foure of the clocke at after none.1555, Richard Eden (translator), The decades of the newe worlde or west India conteynyng the nauigations and conquestes of the Spanyardes by Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, London: Edward Sutton, “The...

Adjective

becalmed (comparative more becalmed, superlative most becalmed)

  1. Unable to move due to lack of wind.
    • […] when we got aſterne we grew becalm'd, land-lockt in a fort, and were ſported all the way […]1638, Thomas Herbert, Some years travels into divers parts of Asia and Afrique
    • Although the breeze had now utterly failed, we had made a great deal of way during the night, and were now lying becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast.1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC

Forms of becalmed

comparativemore becalmed
superlativemost becalmed

Words formed from becalmed

Questions about becalmed

What does becalmed mean?
Becalmed means unable to move due to lack of wind.
What is becalmed the simple past and past participle of?
Becalmed is the simple past and past participle of becalm.
What part of speech is becalmed?
Becalmed is an adjective.

Words near becalmed in the dictionary

  1. becall
  2. becalled
  3. becalling
  4. becalls
  5. becalm
  6. becalmed
  7. becalming
  8. becalmment
  9. becalmments
  10. becalms
  11. became

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: becalmed (page history and authors); becalm (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.

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