Fried

How to spell fried

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fried

What does fried mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of 'fry': cooked in hot fat or oil.
2. adjectiveDescribing food that has been cooked in hot fat or oil.

Fried in a sentence

• verb

  She fried the onions until they turned golden.

• adjective

  The menu offered fried chicken with a side of slaw.

• verb

  The eggs were fried in a little butter.

• adjective

  A plate of fried rice arrived first.

Where does fried come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past form of the verb 'fry', which comes from the Old French 'frire', meaning 'to fry' or 'to roast'. That French verb descends in turn from the Latin 'frigere', which meant 'to roast' or 'to fry' in hot fat or oil. English adopted 'fry' in the early 1300s, and the past form was built in the normal way by changing the final 'y' to 'i' and adding '-ed', giving 'fried'. The same Latin root sits behind related cooking words such as 'fritter' and the borrowed 'frites' of 'chips' fame. The spelling trap is small but real: the silent shift from 'fry' to 'frie-' before the '-d' is what produces the 'ie' that some writers second-guess.

How the word is built

• fry (to cook in hot fat)
• -ed (past tense / past participle / adjective ending)