Emptied

How to spell emptied

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce emptied

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emptied mean?

1. verbRemoved all the contents from something, or poured something out completely.

Emptied in a sentence

• She emptied the dishwasher before leaving for work.

• The cleaners emptied every bin on the office floor.

Where does emptied come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word empty comes from the Old English aemettig, meaning 'unoccupied', 'vacant', or 'at leisure', which was built on aemetta, a noun meaning 'leisure' or 'rest'. In its earliest sense the word described not a container without contents but a person without obligations, someone free of work. The 'p' heard and written in the modern form was not there originally; it crept in as a natural bridge between the 'm' and 't' sounds, the same way it sneaks into 'something' or 'warmth'. Over the Middle English period the meaning shifted from 'idle' to the familiar 'containing nothing', and the verb 'to empty' developed alongside it. The past tense emptied simply follows the regular English rule of turning a final y into i before adding -ed, which is the small spelling step most likely to trip a writer.

How the word is built

• empti- (from empty, with y changed to i)
• -ed (past tense suffix)