Lied

How to spell lied

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lied

What does lied mean?

1. verbPast tense of lie: deliberately said something untrue in order to deceive.

Lied in a sentence

• He lied about his whereabouts to avoid awkward questions.

• She lied on the insurance form and later faced a fine.

Where does lied come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The everyday verb behind this spelling comes from the Old English leogan, meaning 'to speak falsely' or 'to deceive', a thoroughly Germanic word with relatives in Dutch liegen and German lugen, both carrying the same sense of telling untruths. The noun 'lie', a deliberate falsehood, grew from the same root and is recorded from very early English. When the verb takes its past tense it simply adds the regular -d ending, and because the base already ends in -e the result is the compact spelling 'lied'. A separate and unrelated sense exists in music: the German noun Lied, literally just 'song', was borrowed into English in the nineteenth century to name a German art song set to a poem, and it keeps its German pronunciation. The two meanings look identical on the page but sound quite different, which is the main thing to watch when writing this word.

How the word is built

• lie (from Old English leogan: to speak falsely)
• -d (past-tense suffix; the verb's final -e is absorbed, giving lied)