Allowed

How to spell allowed

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce allowed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does allowed mean?

1. verbPast tense of allow: gave permission for something, or did not forbid it.

Allowed in a sentence

• The airline allowed each passenger one cabin bag.

• His manager allowed him to work from home on Fridays.

Where does allowed come from?

Language of origin: French

The word traces back through Old French alouer to two different Latin verbs that fell together and blurred over time. One was allaudare, built from ad (to) and laudare (to praise), so it originally carried a sense of approving or commending something. The other was the Late Latin adlocare, from ad (to) and locare (to place or assign), which meant to grant or allot. By the time the verb reached Middle English in the 1300s these strands had merged, and 'allow' came to mean both 'to permit' and 'to assign or set aside'. The everyday modern sense of permitting won out, and 'allowed' is simply its regular past form. Note that it sounds identical to 'aloud', which comes from a completely unrelated Old English root for 'loud'; that coincidence is the whole spelling trap.

How the word is built

• al- (to, from Latin ad)
• low (from Old French alouer: to assign, permit)
• -ed (past-tense/past-participle suffix)

Words that sound like allowed

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• aloud: In a voice that can be heard, rather than silently or in one's head.