Dubbed

How to spell dubbed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dubbed

What does dubbed mean?

1. verbGave someone or something an informal name or nickname.
2. verbReplaced or added a new voice track to a film or video, often in another language.
3. verbConferred knighthood on someone, traditionally by a light touch of a sword on the shoulder.

Dubbed in a sentence

• The press dubbed him the comeback king after the final.

• The studio dubbed the Italian film into English for cinema release.

• The queen dubbed the soldier for his bravery in battle.

• Locals dubbed the new bypass the road to nowhere.

• The cartoon was dubbed by a famous voice actor.

• The young squire was dubbed before the assembled court.

Where does dubbed come from?

Language of origin: French

The base verb 'dub' reaches back to late Old English 'dubbian', meaning to confer knighthood by striking a person lightly on the shoulder with a sword. That word is generally traced to the Old French 'adober' or 'adouber', meaning to equip a young man with arms or armour, the ceremony that turned a squire into a knight. From the ritual of naming a knight, the sense broadened over the centuries to mean simply giving someone or something a name or nickname. A quite separate, much later meaning arose in the early film industry around 1929, when 'dub' became a clipped form of 'double': sound engineers 'doubled' a film's soundtrack by adding new dialogue, often in another language, which is why we speak of a film being dubbed. The spelling trap in the past tense is the doubled 'b', kept because the single short vowel demands it before the '-ed' ending.

How the word is built

• dub (to name, strike, or double)
• -b- (doubled consonant)
• -ed (past tense)