Pleased

How to spell pleased

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pleased

What does pleased mean?

1. adjectiveFeeling happy, satisfied, or content about something.

Pleased in a sentence

• The manager was pleased with the quarterly results.

• She felt pleased that her hard work had finally paid off.

Where does pleased come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb placere, which literally meant 'to be agreeable, to give satisfaction'. It travelled into English through Old French plaisir, and the early Middle English verb 'plesen' meant to satisfy or to be acceptable to someone. The adjective 'pleased' is simply the past participle of the verb 'please', built with the ordinary -ed ending, describing the state of someone who has been given satisfaction. The same placere root sits inside a whole family of relatives: pleasure, pleasant, complacent, and even 'placebo', which began as the Latin for 'I shall please'. The spelling keeps the silent middle that many learners drop: the 'ea' represents a single long vowel, so the trap is remembering both letters and the final 'sed' that sounds like a 'z'.

How the word is built

• pleas- (from Latin placere: to please, to be agreeable)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)