Practised

How to spell practised

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce practised

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does practised mean?

1. verbPerformed an activity repeatedly in the past in order to maintain or improve a skill.
2. adjectiveSkilled or expert as a result of long experience or repeated performance.

Practised in a sentence

• verb

  She practised the violin for two hours every evening before the audition.

• adjective

  A practised negotiator can read the room within minutes.

• verb

  The team practised the new drill until every player knew it by heart.

• adjective

  With the calm of a practised surgeon, she made the first incision.

Where does practised come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek praktikos, meaning 'concerned with action' or 'fit for doing', which itself grew from prassein, 'to do or to act'. Latin took it up as practicare, 'to do or to perform', and Medieval Latin and Old French passed it on as practiser, meaning to carry something out or to apply it in real life. English adopted the verb in the fifteenth century, first in the sense of putting knowledge into action and later in the familiar modern sense of repeating an activity in order to get better at it. In British and Canadian usage the verb is deliberately spelled with an s (practise, practised) to set it apart from the noun practice with a c, mirroring the same advise/advice and devise/device pattern. That noun-versus-verb split is precisely the spelling trap here, because American writers spell both forms with a c, so 'practiced' is seen everywhere in media even where the British rule calls for the s.

How the word is built

• practis(e) (to perform repeatedly, from Latin practicare 'to do, carry out')
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)

British and American spelling

Practised is the British spelling. American English spells it practiced.