Mailed

How to spell mailed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mailed

What does mailed mean?

1. verbSent something through the postal system.
2. adjectiveCovered or protected with metal mesh armour.

Mailed in a sentence

• verb

  She mailed the parcel to her sister last week.

• adjective

  The knight raised his mailed fist toward the gate.

• verb

  The office mailed every invoice before the deadline.

• adjective

  A mailed glove hung in the museum display case.

Where does mailed come from?

Language of origin: French

The word splits into two histories that happen to share a spelling. The postal sense traces to Old French 'male', meaning a travelling bag or wallet, which came from a Germanic word for a leather pouch; in English a 'mail' was originally the bag that letters were carried in, and only later did the contents themselves become 'the mail'. The armour sense comes from a different Old French word, 'maille', meaning a mesh or the link of a net, which goes back to the Latin 'macula', literally a 'spot' or 'mesh of a net'. In both cases English added the regular suffix -ed to form the past tense or a descriptive adjective. The postal meaning is by far the more common today, which is why the spelling trap is simply remembering the single -l before -ed rather than doubling it.

How the word is built

• mail (post; or mesh armour)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)