Fuelled

How to spell fuelled

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fuelled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fuelled mean?

1. verbPast tense of fuel: supplied with combustible material, or caused something to grow stronger or more active.

Fuelled in a sentence

• The crew fuelled the aircraft before the long flight home.

• Rising rents fuelled public anger across the city.

Where does fuelled come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of the verb 'fuel', which began life as a noun. It traces back to the Old French 'fouaille', meaning material gathered for burning, which itself rests on the Latin 'focus', meaning 'hearth' or 'fireplace'. English took the noun in the 1300s to mean wood, coal, or anything else burned to make heat, and only later turned it into a verb meaning 'to supply with fuel' and then, figuratively, 'to feed or intensify' something such as anger or speculation. The same Latin 'focus' for hearth also gives us the word 'focus' itself, since the hearth was the central point of a home. The spelling 'fuelled' with a doubled l is the British and Canadian convention, which doubles a final l after a vowel before a suffix even when the syllable is unstressed; American English keeps a single l in 'fueled', and that contrast is the main thing a writer has to remember here.

How the word is built

• fuel (from Old French fouaille: material for burning)
• -led (doubled-l past-tense ending used in British and Canadian spelling)