Draped

How to spell draped

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce draped

What does draped mean?

1. verbCovered, hung, or arranged loosely with cloth or a similar material.
2. adjectiveAdorned or covered with cloth that hangs in loose folds.

Draped in a sentence

• verb

  She draped the sofa with a soft grey throw before the guests arrived.

• adjective

  The heavily draped windows kept the afternoon light out of the study.

• verb

  The workers draped the scaffolding in protective sheeting overnight.

• adjective

  A softly draped gown suited the formal dinner perfectly.

Where does draped come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past form of the verb 'drape', which English took from the Old French 'draper', meaning 'to weave or to make cloth'. That verb grew out of the noun 'drap', simply meaning 'cloth', a word recorded in Late Latin as 'drappus' that may ultimately trace to a Celtic or Germanic source for woven fabric. When the word arrived in English in the late Middle Ages it first carried the cloth-trade sense, and the modern meaning of arranging fabric loosely over something developed later, in the nineteenth century. The same humble 'drap' root sits inside related words such as 'drapery' and the shop title 'draper', a seller of cloth. Because the base is 'drape' with a silent final 'e', the past form keeps the spelling regular as 'draped', dropping the 'e' before adding '-ed'.

How the word is built

• drape (from Old French drap: cloth)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)