Aired

How to spell aired

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce aired

What does aired mean?

1. verbPast tense of 'air': broadcast on radio or television, exposed to fresh air, or expressed openly.

Aired in a sentence

• The new drama series aired on national television last night.

• She aired the damp guest room by opening every window for an hour.

Where does aired come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of the verb 'air', which descends from the noun 'air', meaning the invisible mixture of gases we breathe. English took the word through Old French 'air' from the Latin 'aer', which in turn was borrowed from the Greek 'aer', a word for the lower atmosphere or mist as opposed to the bright upper sky. The noun arrived in the 1200s, and over time it grew verb senses: to expose something to fresh air (to ventilate), and later, by the 1300s, to make opinions publicly known, as if releasing them into the open. The broadcasting sense, as in a programme that 'aired', came from the phrase 'on the air', which described early radio signals travelling through the atmosphere. The spelling trap is purely sound based: in many accents 'aired' is indistinguishable from 'erred' (made a mistake), so the meaning, not the ear, must guide the spelling.

How the word is built

• air (from Latin aer: the atmosphere)
• -ed (past tense suffix)