Intimidated

How to spell intimidated

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce intimidated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does intimidated mean?

1. adjectiveFeeling frightened, overawed, or lacking confidence because of someone or something perceived as powerful.
2. verbFrightened or pressured someone, often to force them into doing or not doing something.

Intimidated in a sentence

• adjective

  Many new staff feel intimidated during their first week at head office.

• verb

  The landlord intimidated several tenants into leaving without proper notice.

• adjective

  She was intimidated by the sheer size of the lecture hall on her first day.

• verb

  Prosecutors argued that the defendant had intimidated a key witness before the trial.

Where does intimidated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb intimidare, meaning 'to make afraid', which was built from the prefix in- (here acting to intensify or to drive 'into' a state) and timidus, meaning 'fearful' or 'timid'. That adjective in turn came from timere, the Latin verb 'to fear', the same root that gives us 'timid' and 'timorous'. English adopted intimidate in the early to middle 1600s, and the familiar form 'intimidated' is simply its past tense and past participle. From the start it carried the deliberate sense of frightening someone into submission, which is still its core meaning today. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: writers often forget the second 'i' (intim-I-dated) or wonder whether to double a consonant, even though it is built tidily from timid plus the regular -ate and -ed endings.

How the word is built

• in- (intensive/into)
• timid (from Latin timidus 'fearful')
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ed (past tense / past participle)