Laced

How to spell laced

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce laced

What does laced mean?

1. verbTied or fastened tightly using a lace or cord.
2. verbAdded a small or secret amount of alcohol, a drug, or another substance to food or drink.

Laced in a sentence

• She laced her hiking boots before setting off up the trail.

• Someone laced the punch with vodka at the office party.

• He laced his shoes and double-knotted them for the race.

• The report claimed the coffee had been laced with a sedative.

Where does laced come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of the verb 'lace', which English took from Old French 'lacier', meaning 'to fasten with a cord'. That French verb grew from the Latin 'laqueus', which literally meant a noose or a snare, the kind of looped cord used to trap an animal. The earliest English uses, from around the 1200s, kept this idea of binding and tying, especially the cords that fastened clothing and shoes. From there the meaning branched: 'lace' came to describe the delicate openwork fabric of interwoven threads, and figuratively 'to lace' a drink meant to thread a hidden ingredient through it. The spelling stays simple, with a soft 'c' before 'e', and the silent rule that the final 'e' of 'lace' is dropped before the '-ed' is added, giving 'laced' rather than 'laceed'.

How the word is built

• lace (cord, snare)
• -ed (past tense/participle)