Pegged

How to spell pegged

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pegged

What does pegged mean?

1. verbFastened, secured, or held firmly in place using a peg or pin.
2. verbHeld at a fixed value or level, especially a currency or price tied to a set figure.
3. verbIdentified or categorised someone as a particular type, often quickly.

Pegged in a sentence

• The tent was pegged down before the storm arrived.

• The central bank pegged its currency to the dollar for two decades.

• The interviewer pegged him as a reliable and steady worker.

• She pegged the wet washing along the line in the garden.

• Interest rates were pegged at a low level all year.

• Colleagues quickly pegged her as the most organised person on the team.

Where does pegged come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The word grows from the noun 'peg', a small pin used to fasten or hang things, which appears in late Middle English around the 1400s and is thought to come from Low German or Dutch sources such as the Middle Dutch 'pegge', meaning a plug or peg. The literal sense was a wooden or metal pin driven into something to hold it fast, and from that very concrete image the verb 'to peg' developed, meaning to fasten, mark, or fix in place. Over time the figurative senses spread out from this idea of fixing something firmly: a currency can be 'pegged' to hold a fixed value, a price can be 'pegged' at a set level, and a person can be 'pegged' (informally) as belonging to a fixed type. The doubled g in 'pegged' is the regular English habit of doubling a final consonant after a short stressed vowel before adding a suffix, the same pattern seen in 'begged' and 'tagged'. Keeping both g letters is the small spelling trap, since the word sounds as if a single g would do.

How the word is built

• peg (root: a pin or fastener)
• -ged (past tense, with the g doubled after a short vowel)