Clapped

How to spell clapped

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce clapped

What does clapped mean?

1. verbStruck the palms of the hands together, usually to show approval or to make a sharp sound.
2. adjectiveIn informal British use, worn out, broken down, or no longer working well, often as 'clapped out'.

Clapped in a sentence

• verb

  The audience clapped loudly when the lecture ended.

• adjective

  The garage refused to repair his clapped out old van.

• verb

  She clapped her hands to get the children's attention.

• adjective

  The company was still running on clapped out machinery from the 1980s.

Where does clapped come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of 'clap', which comes from the Old English verb clappian, meaning to strike, beat, or throb. The word is what linguists call imitative or echoic in origin, meaning it was coined to mimic the sharp sound that two hands or two flat surfaces make when struck together. Closely related forms appear across the Germanic languages, including the Old Norse klappa and the Dutch and German klappen, all carrying the same idea of a sudden striking noise. The doubling of the 'p' in 'clapped' follows the regular English rule for short, single-syllable verbs that end in a single vowel plus a single consonant, which is the same pattern behind 'stopped' and 'tapped'. That doubling is the main spelling point, since a single 'p' would suggest a long vowel and the wrong word.

How the word is built

• clap (Old English clappian, to strike or beat)
• -ped (past tense, with the final consonant doubled before -ed)