Led

How to spell led

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce led

What does led mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of 'lead': guided, directed, or was in charge of.

Led in a sentence

• She led the team through a difficult merger last year.

• The tour guide led us along a narrow mountain path.

Where does led come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'lead', meaning 'to guide or conduct'. The base verb comes from the Old English lǽdan, meaning 'to cause to go with one' or 'to guide', which in turn grew from a Germanic root tied to the idea of a journey or a way. Over time the present tense kept its long vowel (lead, rhyming with 'feed'), but the past tense shortened to 'led', rhyming with 'bed', exactly as 'read' and 'feed' behave irregularly. This is the spelling trap: people write 'lead' for the past tense by analogy with 'read' and 'read', and because the soft, heavy metal 'lead' is also spelled l-e-a-d and pronounced the same as 'led'. Remembering that the past tense drops the 'a' and is simply three letters, l-e-d, settles the confusion.

How the word is built

• led (past tense and past participle of the verb 'lead', from Old English lǽdan)