Filmed

How to spell filmed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce filmed

What does filmed mean?

1. verbRecorded moving images of something using a camera.

Filmed in a sentence

• The documentary was filmed over three years in remote villages.

• They filmed the wedding ceremony from two different angles.

Where does filmed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English filmen, which meant a thin skin or membrane, related to the Germanic root for skin or fell. For centuries it referred to any thin coating or layer, such as the delicate film that forms on the surface of a liquid. When photography developed in the nineteenth century, the thin light-sensitive coating on a plate was called a film, and the word soon transferred to the flexible celluloid strip used to capture moving images. From there it became a verb meaning to record on such a strip, and 'filmed' is simply its regular past tense. The spelling is straightforward, since you just add -ed to film without changing anything, which is a useful anchor against overcomplicating it.

How the word is built

• film (root, from Old English filmen: thin skin, membrane)
• -ed (past tense suffix)