Made

How to spell made

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce made

What does made mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of 'make': created, produced, or caused something to happen.

Made in a sentence

• She made a wooden table for the dining room.

• The chef made a rich tomato sauce from scratch.

Where does made come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'make', which descends from the Old English macian, meaning 'to build, prepare, or bring into being'. That verb belonged to a wider West Germanic family, sharing roots with the Dutch maken and the German machen, all carrying the sense of fitting or fashioning something together. The original notion was close to 'kneading' or 'fitting matter into shape', which is why the word came to cover almost any act of creation. The form 'made' arose through the regular weakening of the older 'maked' as English smoothed away awkward consonant clusters over the centuries. Because it sounds exactly like 'maid' (a young woman or servant, a completely unrelated word), the two are easy to swap in writing, which is the main spelling trap to watch.

How the word is built

• made (past tense and past participle of make, from Old English macian)

Words that sound like made

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• maid: A woman employed to do household cleaning and other domestic work.