Embodied

How to spell embodied

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce embodied

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does embodied mean?

1. verbGave a concrete, visible or tangible form to an idea, quality or feeling.
2. adjectiveExisting in or expressed through a physical, bodily or tangible form.

Embodied in a sentence

• verb

  The new charter embodied the values the company had long claimed to hold.

• adjective

  The course explores embodied knowledge, the kind we hold in muscle memory rather than words.

• verb

  Her quiet leadership embodied everything the team aspired to be.

• adjective

  Researchers studied the embodied experience of working long shifts on your feet.

Where does embodied come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'embody', which English assembled in the late 1500s from the prefix 'em-', a form of 'in-' meaning 'into' or 'within', and the noun 'body'. The noun 'body' is a native English word, traced to the Old English 'bodig', which simply meant the physical frame of a person or animal; its deeper roots are obscure, since it has no clear relatives in other Germanic languages. To embody something was therefore to put it into a body, that is, to give an abstract idea a concrete physical or visible form. The spelling shifts from 'body' to 'embodied' for the same reason that 'carry' becomes 'carried': a final 'y' after a consonant turns to 'i' before the '-ed' ending, which is the small trap to watch in writing.

How the word is built

• em- (in, into)
• body (the physical form)
• -ied (past-tense and adjective ending, from verbs ending in -y)