Boiled

How to spell boiled

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce boiled

What does boiled mean?

1. verbHeated a liquid until it bubbled and turned to vapour, or cooked food in such a liquid.
2. adjectiveCooked by being heated in bubbling water.

Boiled in a sentence

• verb

  She boiled the kettle before making the tea.

• adjective

  He ate a boiled egg with toast for breakfast.

• verb

  The pasta boiled for ten minutes while the sauce simmered.

• adjective

  The recipe calls for two boiled potatoes, mashed with butter.

Where does boiled come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past form of the verb 'boil', which English took from Old French 'boillir' in the early 1200s. The French verb descended from the Latin 'bullire', meaning 'to bubble' or 'to seethe', and that in turn was built on 'bulla', a Latin noun for a 'bubble' or rounded swelling. The same 'bulla' root surfaces in surprising English relatives such as 'bullion' and even the document seal called a 'bull'. The spelling keeps the 'oi' that French handed over, while the plain '-ed' ending was added once the word was fully naturalised in English. Because the word follows the ordinary rule of adding '-ed' to a verb ending in a consonant, the spelling rarely causes trouble.

How the word is built

• boil (to bubble with heat)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)