Baptized

How to spell baptized

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce baptized

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does baptized mean?

1. verbAdmitted someone into a Christian church through the ritual of sprinkling with or immersion in water, often also giving them a name.

Baptized in a sentence

• The infant was baptized at the village church on Sunday morning.

• Both of their children were baptized before the family moved abroad.

Where does baptized come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek verb baptizein, meaning 'to immerse' or 'to dip repeatedly', which was built on the simpler verb baptein, 'to dip or plunge into liquid'. Early Christians adopted the term for the rite of immersing a new believer in water, and from there it passed into Church Latin as baptizare. It then travelled through Old French as baptiser before settling into English in the medieval period. The original sense of plain dipping is worth remembering, because it explains the otherwise surprising 'pt' cluster in the middle: the 'p' belongs to the Greek root bapt-, not to any English habit, and that is the spot writers most often get wrong. The same root survives in the noun 'baptism' and the title 'Baptist'.

How the word is built

• bapt- (from Greek baptein/baptizein: to dip or immerse)
• -ize (verb-forming suffix)
• -d (past tense)

British and American spelling

Baptized is the American spelling. British English spells it baptised.