Called

How to spell called

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce called

What does called mean?

1. verbPast tense of 'call': to have summoned someone, telephoned them, named something, or cried out.

Called in a sentence

• She called the office to confirm her appointment.

• The manager called the team into the meeting room.

Where does called come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the past tense of the verb 'call', which entered English from the Old Norse 'kalla', meaning 'to cry out loudly' or 'to summon'. The Norse word was carried into northern England by Scandinavian settlers during the Viking age, and it gradually displaced or blended with native Old English forms. Over time the sense broadened from simply shouting to summoning a person, giving someone a name, and eventually telephoning. The doubled 'l' belongs to the base verb 'call', and adding the regular '-ed' ending produces 'called'; because the spoken word ends in a clean 'd' sound, writers rarely drop the silent reminder that two 'l's sit before it. The same Norse root also lies behind dialect words and the Scots 'caw', preserving the original sense of crying out.

How the word is built

• call (to cry out, summon, name)
• -ed (past tense/past participle suffix)