Oppressed

How to spell oppressed

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce oppressed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oppressed mean?

1. adjectiveSubjected to prolonged cruel or unjust treatment, control, or hardship by those in power.
2. verbPast tense of oppress: to have kept someone in hardship through harsh or unjust control.

Oppressed in a sentence

• adjective

  The new policies were designed to protect oppressed minorities from discrimination.

• verb

  The regime oppressed its citizens for decades before the reforms began.

• adjective

  The historian documented how the oppressed workers eventually demanded fair wages.

• verb

  The company oppressed its staff with impossible quotas and long unpaid hours.

Where does oppressed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb opprimere, meaning 'to press down', 'to crush' or 'to overwhelm', which was formed from the prefix ob- (here meaning 'against' or 'down', altered to op- before the p) and premere, 'to press'. The literal image is therefore of a weight bearing down on someone until they are crushed, and that physical sense of pressing carried smoothly into the figurative sense of holding people down through cruel or unjust authority. English took the word in during the 1300s by way of Old French opresser, where it already carried the meaning of burdening or weighing upon someone. The same premere root sits inside many familiar relatives such as press, compress, express and depress, which is a useful clue to the double s that ends the word. The trap in spelling oppressed is the doubled p at the front, an echo of that swallowed ob- prefix, paired with the doubled s of press.

How the word is built

• op- (form of ob-: against, down)
• press (from Latin premere: to press)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)