Built

How to spell built

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce built

What does built mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of build: constructed or assembled something.

Built in a sentence

• The contractors built the extension in under three months.

• She built her entire business from a spare bedroom.

Where does built come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'build', which comes from the Old English byldan, meaning 'to construct a house or dwelling'. That verb grew out of bold, an early word for a house or fixed dwelling place, so the original idea was quite literally to make a home. For centuries English speakers used the regular form 'builded', and you can still find it in older texts such as the King James Bible, but over time the shorter irregular form 'built' won out. The spelling preserves the 'ui' cluster from 'build', even though the vowel is pronounced as a short 'i', which is exactly the spot where writers slip and drop the silent 'u'. The same Germanic root for dwelling links it distantly to words in the other northern European languages for housing and building.

How the word is built

• buil- (from build, from Old English byldan: to construct)
• -t (past-tense ending)