Dealt

How to spell dealt

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dealt

What does dealt mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of 'deal': handled, distributed, or did business with something or someone.

Dealt in a sentence

• She calmly dealt with every complaint that arrived that morning.

• The dealer dealt four cards to each player at the table.

Where does dealt come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'deal', which comes from the Old English dǣlan, meaning 'to divide, distribute, or share out'. That verb in turn rests on the noun dǣl, meaning 'a part or portion', a close relative of the modern word 'deal' in the sense of 'a good amount'. The same Germanic root survives in the modern German 'teilen' (to share) and 'Teil' (a part), which shows how old and widespread the family is. Over the centuries the sense broadened from physically portioning things out to distributing playing cards, conducting business, and figuratively handling or coping with a situation. The spelling trap lives entirely in the vowel: the long 'ea' of 'deal' is kept in writing even though the past form is pronounced with a short 'e', which is why so many people are tempted to write 'delt'.

How the word is built

• deal (Old English dǣlan: to divide, share)
• -t (irregular past tense ending)