Word.ws English Dictionary

caused

UK/kɔːzd//kɔzd/

caused is the simple past and past participle of cause.

Meaning of cause

Verb

cause (third-person singular simple present causes, present participle causing, simple past and past participle caused)

  1. (transitive) To set off an event or action; to bring about; to produce.
    • The lightning caused thunder.
  2. (ditransitive) To actively produce as a result, by means of force or authority.
    • His dogged determination caused the fundraising to be successful.
  3. (obsolete) To assign or show cause; to give a reason; to make excuse.
    • He, to shifte their curious request, / Gan causen why she could not come in place.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

See all 9 meanings of cause

Words formed from caused

Phrases with caused

Words that rhyme with caused

Questions about caused

What is caused the simple past and past participle of?
Caused is the simple past and past participle of cause.
How do you pronounce caused?
Caused is pronounced /kɔːzd/ (UK).

Words near caused in the dictionary

  1. cause and effect
  2. cause celebre
  3. cause célèbre
  4. cause of action
  5. cause of death
  6. caused
  7. caused a stir
  8. causedness
  9. causedst
  10. causee
  11. causees

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: caused (page history and authors); cause (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-caused.ogg.

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