Charmed

How to spell charmed

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce charmed

What does charmed mean?

1. verbPast tense of charm: delighted, pleased, or won over someone with appeal or persuasion.
2. adjectiveSeeming unusually lucky or protected, as if by magic.

Charmed in a sentence

• verb

  The polite waiter charmed every diner at the table.

• adjective

  He led a charmed life, escaping every disaster unharmed.

• verb

  Her witty speech charmed the entire conference audience.

• adjective

  The investors seemed to enjoy a charmed run of good fortune.

Where does charmed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin carmen, which meant a song, verse, or chant, and by extension a magical incantation muttered to bewitch someone. As this passed into Old French it became charme, a magic spell or enchantment, and English adopted it during the 1200s and 1300s with that same supernatural sense of casting a spell. Over the centuries the magic faded into metaphor, so to charm someone came to mean simply to delight or win them over, and the past form charmed settled into describing both that pleased feeling and, in the phrase 'a charmed life', a sense of being protected as if by magic. The buried connection to carmen also links it to words like 'carol' and 'incantation', a reminder that the root was once about words sung aloud. For spelling, the trap is purely the regular -ed ending added cleanly to charm, with no doubling and no dropped letter.

How the word is built

• charm (from Latin carmen: song, incantation)
• -ed (past tense / adjectival suffix)