Expelled

How to spell expelled

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce expelled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does expelled mean?

1. verbOfficially forced someone to leave a school, organisation, or country, or drove something out by force.

Expelled in a sentence

• The student was expelled for repeatedly cheating in exams.

• Two members were expelled from the club after breaking its rules.

Where does expelled come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'expel', which comes from the Latin verb expellere, meaning 'to drive out' or 'to force away'. That verb was built from ex, meaning 'out', and pellere, meaning 'to drive, push, or strike'. English took the word in during the late 1300s, originally in the broad sense of driving something or someone away by force. The same pellere root drives a whole family of relatives, including 'repel', 'compel', 'dispel', and 'propel', all sharing that idea of pushing. The spelling trap lives entirely in the suffix: because the final syllable 'pel' is stressed and ends in a single vowel plus consonant, the l doubles before -ed, giving 'expelled' rather than 'expeled'.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• pel (from Latin pellere: to drive, push)
• -ed (past tense); note the doubled l before the suffix