Linked

How to spell linked

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce linked

What does linked mean?

1. verbJoined or connected two or more things, either physically or by association.

Linked in a sentence

• The two bank accounts were linked to the same online profile.

• Investigators linked the suspect to the scene through phone records.

Where does linked come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'link', which traces back to the Old Norse 'hlenkr', meaning a ring or a single loop of a chain. Northern English and Scots took up the related Scandinavian word during the medieval period, and by the late 1300s 'link' was the ordinary English term for one of the rings that make up a chain. From that concrete sense of physical chain rings the figurative meaning grew naturally: to join two things together is to 'link' them, just as rings are joined into a chain. The spelling is refreshingly faithful to the sound, since the 'nk' cluster captures the way the tongue closes at the back of the mouth before the hard 'k'. In the digital age the word gained a fresh life describing electronic connections, yet the chain image at its heart has never really left it.

How the word is built

• link (ring of a chain; connection)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)