Pinned

How to spell pinned

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pinned

What does pinned mean?

1. verbFastened or attached something using a pin or similar point.
2. verbHeld something or someone firmly so it could not move.

Pinned in a sentence

• She pinned the notice to the office board before the meeting.

• The fallen beam pinned his arm until rescuers arrived.

• He pinned the pattern carefully to the fabric.

• The wrestler pinned his opponent to the mat for three seconds.

Where does pinned come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'pin', which goes back to the Old English 'pinn', meaning a peg or a bolt. That word was related to similar forms across the West Germanic languages, and it ultimately may trace to the Latin 'pinna', meaning a feather, point, or pointed projection, which is why the earliest pins were sharp little spikes. Over the centuries 'pin' narrowed to mean the small metal fastener we know today, and the verb 'to pin' grew to mean fastening something with such a spike, and then more loosely holding anything firmly in place. When the suffix '-ed' is added, the single 'n' is doubled to 'pinned' because the word is one stressed syllable ending in a single vowel plus a single consonant, the same rule that gives us 'planned' and 'stunned'. That doubling is the only real spelling trap here, since the long-looking 'pinned' is easily slipped to a single 'n'.

How the word is built

• pin (root: a thin fastening spike)
• -n- (consonant doubled before the suffix)
• -ed (past tense / past participle)