Nicknamed

How to spell nicknamed

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nicknamed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nicknamed mean?

1. verbGave someone or something an informal or affectionate name in addition to their real one.

Nicknamed in a sentence

• The players nicknamed their towering goalkeeper the wall.

• Colleagues nicknamed the new intern after his habit of arriving early.

Where does nicknamed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word goes back to the Middle English phrase 'an eke name', where 'eke' was an old word meaning 'also' or 'additional', so an eke name was literally an extra name added to a person. Over time speakers misheard where one word ended and the next began: 'an ekename' was re-divided as 'a nekename', and the stray 'n' migrated onto the noun to give 'nickname'. The 'eke' element shares its ancestry with the verb to eke out, meaning to add to or stretch something further. The base noun was in use by the fifteenth century, and the verb 'to nickname', meaning to give someone such a name, soon followed, with 'nicknamed' as its past and participle form. The hidden history explains the spelling trap: there is no 'k' sound from a word like 'nick' the cut; the double letters come simply from name plus the -ed ending, so it is nick + name + d, not 'nick named' as two words.

How the word is built

• nick (from a misdivided 'an eke name', eke meaning additional)
• name
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)