Changed

How to spell changed

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce changed

What does changed mean?

1. verbPast tense of change: made or became different, or replaced one thing with another.

Changed in a sentence

• She changed her flight to an earlier departure.

• The company changed its policy after the complaints.

Where does changed come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes ultimately from the Latin cambiare, meaning 'to barter' or 'to exchange', a verb that itself was borrowed from a Celtic source carrying the sense of bending or turning something around. It passed into Old French as changier, where it broadened from purely commercial exchange to the wider notion of making something different. English took it up in the 1200s, first in that mercantile sense of swapping one thing for another, and gradually extended it to any alteration of state or appearance. The past tense 'changed' simply adds the regular -ed ending, but because the base ends in a silent 'e', that 'e' is kept and the suffix attaches cleanly, which is the small spelling point worth remembering. The same cambiare root survives in the financial word 'exchange' and in the Italian 'cambio', the term still used at currency booths today.

How the word is built

• chang- (from change, to alter or exchange)
• -ed (past tense suffix)