Spelling Garden

Caged

verbConfined a creature inside a cage or other barred enclosure.

How to spell caged

caged

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce caged

American pronunciation
kayjd
/keɪdʒd/

What does caged mean?

  1. verbConfined a creature inside a cage or other barred enclosure.
  2. adjectiveKept shut inside a cage; confined behind bars.

Caged in a sentence

Voice

Where does caged come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word 'cage' arrived in English in the 1200s from Old French 'cage', which in turn descended from the Latin 'cavea', meaning an 'enclosure', 'coop', or 'hollow place', built on 'cavus', meaning 'hollow'. The same 'cavus' root lies behind familiar relatives such as 'cave' and 'cavity', all sharing the idea of a hollowed-out space. Originally a cage was simply any framed enclosure for keeping birds or beasts, and the sense narrowed over time to the barred structure we picture today. The form 'caged' is the regular past tense and participle, made by adding '-ed'; because 'cage' ends in a silent 'e', that 'e' is dropped before the ending, giving 'caged' rather than 'cageed'. The soft 'g' sound is preserved by the 'e' in the root, which is why the spelling keeps the visual link back to 'cage'.

How the word is built

Fix your spelling for good.

Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.

Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.

Start your garden