Blamed

How to spell blamed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce blamed

What does blamed mean?

1. verbHeld someone or something responsible for a fault or wrong.

Blamed in a sentence

• The manager blamed the delay on a faulty delivery system.

• Investigators blamed the crash on worn brakes rather than driver error.

Where does blamed come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'blame', which entered English in the 1200s from Old French 'blasmer', meaning to find fault with or to reproach. The Old French word came from Late Latin 'blasphemare', meaning to speak evil of or to revile, which itself was borrowed from the Greek 'blasphemein', built from elements meaning roughly 'to speak harm'. Remarkably, that very same Greek source split into two English words: the everyday 'blame' and the much heavier 'blaspheme', so the milder act of finding fault and the serious sin of irreverent speech are linguistic cousins. The spelling keeps the silent 'e' of 'blame' hidden inside, since the past tense simply adds 'd' to a verb already ending in 'e', giving 'blamed' rather than any doubled letter. Recognising that 'blame' plus 'd' is all that is happening removes the temptation to add an extra consonant.

How the word is built

• blame (from Old French blasmer: to find fault with)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)