Impressed

How to spell impressed

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce impressed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does impressed mean?

1. verbPast tense of impress: caused someone to feel admiration or respect.
2. verbPast tense of impress: pressed a mark, design, or pattern into a surface.

Impressed in a sentence

• The interview panel was clearly impressed by her detailed answers.

• The official impressed the company seal into the warm wax.

• Customers were impressed by how quickly the refund arrived.

• The maker impressed a tiny logo onto the back of each coin.

Where does impressed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'impress', which comes from the Latin imprimere, a compound of in- 'into, onto' and premere 'to press'. The literal idea was to press one thing into another so as to leave a mark, exactly what a seal does when stamped into hot wax. English took the word in during the 1300s, partly through Old French, and the original physical sense of pressing a design into a surface survives in related words like 'imprint' and 'impression'. From the concrete act of leaving a physical mark the meaning broadened to leaving a mark on the mind, hence the modern sense of stirring someone's admiration. The same premere root also gives us 'press', 'pressure', and 'compress', which is a useful reminder that the heart of the spelling is the doubled-s 'press'.

How the word is built

• im- (in, onto)
• press (from Latin premere: to press)
• -ed (past tense suffix)