Bathed

How to spell bathed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bathed

What does bathed mean?

1. verbWashed oneself or someone else by immersing in water.
2. verbCovered or surrounded as if by water, especially in light or moisture.

Bathed in a sentence

• She bathed the baby in warm water before putting him to bed.

• The meadow was bathed in golden evening light.

• After the long hike they bathed in the cool river to cool off.

• His shirt was bathed in sweat after the workout.

Where does bathed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the past tense of the verb 'bathe', which descends from the Old English baþian, meaning 'to wash' or 'to immerse in water'. That verb was formed directly on the noun bæþ, the ancestor of our modern 'bath', and both belong to a wider family of Germanic words for warmth and washing; German still has 'baden' and 'Bad' for the same ideas. The key spelling point is that the noun 'bath' has a short, plain ending, while the verb gained a silent 'e' (bathe) that lengthens the vowel and softens the 'th' sound, and that silent 'e' is exactly what makes 'bathed' look the way it does. The figurative use, as in being 'bathed in light', grew naturally from the literal image of being covered or surrounded by water. The word has been part of the everyday English vocabulary continuously since the Anglo-Saxon period.

How the word is built

• bathe (from Old English baþian, to wash)
• -d (past tense suffix)