Chewed

How to spell chewed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chewed

What does chewed mean?

1. verbPast tense of chew: bit and ground food or another object repeatedly with the teeth.

Chewed in a sentence

• She chewed her food slowly to avoid indigestion.

• The puppy chewed right through the leather strap.

Where does chewed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of 'chew', which comes from the Old English verb ceowan, meaning 'to bite and grind with the teeth'. That word grew out of a shared Germanic root, and close relatives survive in Dutch kauwen and German kauen, both still meaning 'to chew'. The same ancient root is thought to lie behind 'jaw' and 'cud', the food a cow brings back up to chew again. The spelling keeps the 'ew' that English uses for the long 'oo' sound, as in 'few' and 'new', and the past tense simply adds the regular '-ed'. The word has been part of everyday English speech for well over a thousand years, long before it ever appeared in writing.

How the word is built

• chew (root, from Old English ceowan: to bite and grind with the teeth)
• -ed (past tense suffix)