Asked

How to spell asked

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce asked

What does asked mean?

1. verbPut a question to someone, or made a request for something, at a time in the past.

Asked in a sentence

• She asked the waiter for the bill before they left.

• The interviewer asked several difficult questions about my last job.

Where does asked come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'ask', which descends directly from the Old English verb 'ascian' (also spelled 'axian'), meaning 'to call for an answer' or 'to demand'. It belongs to the native Germanic core of English, with close cousins in Old Frisian 'askia' and Old High German 'eiscon', all tracing back to a Proto-Germanic root carrying the sense of seeking or demanding. For centuries the two forms 'ascian' and 'axian' competed, which is why the dialect pronunciation 'aks' survived in some regions long after standard spelling settled on 'ask'. The modern past tense simply adds the regular '-ed' ending, but because the final 'k' is followed by that suffix the word ends in a crisp '-skt' sound, and that gap between how it sounds and how it is written is the small trap that occasionally trips writers into spellings like 'askt' or 'aksed'.

How the word is built

• ask (root: to request or inquire)
• -ed (past tense suffix)