Dragged

How to spell dragged

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dragged

What does dragged mean?

1. verbPulled something heavy or resistant along a surface with effort, or moved slowly and with difficulty.

Dragged in a sentence

• He dragged the broken sofa across the garage floor.

• She dragged the suitcase up four flights of stairs.

Where does dragged come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the past tense of the verb 'drag', which comes from Old Norse 'draga' or the closely related Old English 'dragan', both meaning 'to pull, draw, or haul along'. The same ancient Germanic root also gave English the word 'draw', and the two words were essentially twins before their meanings drifted apart, with 'drag' keeping the heavier, more effortful sense of hauling something across the ground. The verb has been in continuous use since the Middle Ages, and the spelling 'dragged' follows the regular English rule that a short single-vowel verb ending in a single consonant doubles that consonant before '-ed'. That doubling is exactly the spelling trap: the single short 'a' demands two g's, so 'draged' looks plausible but is wrong. Related forms such as 'dragging' and 'draggy' double the g for the same reason.

How the word is built

• drag (to pull along)
• -ged (past tense, with consonant doubling)