Branded

How to spell branded

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce branded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does branded mean?

1. adjectiveSold under and carrying a recognised maker's name rather than being generic.
2. verbMarked permanently with a hot iron, or labelled someone with a lasting reputation.

Branded in a sentence

• adjective

  The supermarket stocks both own-label and branded cereals.

• verb

  The ranch hands branded every calf before spring.

• adjective

  Branded trainers usually cost far more than unmarked ones.

• verb

  The tabloids branded him a cheat for years afterwards.

Where does branded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English noun 'brand' (also spelled 'brond'), which originally meant a piece of burning wood, a torch, or fire itself. Because a flashing sword blade gleamed like fire, 'brand' also came to mean a sword in early poetry. From the literal idea of burning came the practice of pressing a hot iron onto livestock or property to leave a permanent ownership mark, and by the seventeenth century 'to brand' meant to mark in this way, then figuratively to stigmatise a person. The verb gained its regular past form 'branded' simply by adding the native '-ed' ending. In the twentieth century commerce reshaped the noun into the modern sense of a maker's identity, so 'branded' now most often describes goods carrying a recognised name; the spelling stays refreshingly simple because the whole family is native Germanic rather than borrowed.

How the word is built

• brand (mark, burning piece of wood)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)