Pounded

How to spell pounded

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pounded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pounded mean?

1. verbStruck something heavily and repeatedly, or crushed it by beating.
2. verbHit a surface forcefully with the fist to demand attention or vent anger.

Pounded in a sentence

• The storm pounded the coastline for three straight days.

• The angry customer pounded the counter and demanded a refund.

• She pounded the dough flat with her fists before shaping the loaves.

• He pounded the table to make his point during the meeting.

Where does pounded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'pound', which descends from the Old English verb 'punian', meaning 'to crush, beat, or bray in a mortar'. The original word had no final 'd' at all; the spelling we use today gained an intrusive 'd' on the end during the late medieval and early modern period, a common drift in English (the same thing happened to 'sound' from Old French 'son' and to 'lend' from Old English 'laenan'). The core sense has stayed remarkably steady for over a thousand years: striking something hard and repeatedly, whether grinding spices in a mortar or hammering on a door. Note that this verb is unrelated to the money 'pound' and the weight 'pound', which both come instead from Latin 'pondus', meaning 'weight'. When the past-tense ending is added, the base 'pound' simply takes '-ed', giving the doubled-sounding but single-d spelling 'pounded'.

How the word is built

• pound (Old English punian: to crush, beat)
• -ed (past-tense/past-participle suffix)