Pressed

How to spell pressed

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pressed

What does pressed mean?

1. verbPushed firmly against something, or squeezed or applied steady force to it.
2. adjectiveShort of something, especially time or money, and under strain as a result.

Pressed in a sentence

• verb

  She pressed the button to summon the lift.

• adjective

  With three deadlines in one week, she felt seriously pressed for time.

• verb

  He pressed the wrinkled shirt with a hot iron before the meeting.

• adjective

  The family was hard pressed to cover the rent that month.

Where does pressed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past form of the verb 'press', which English took from Old French 'presser', itself from the Latin 'pressare', a repeated-action form of 'premere' meaning 'to push, squeeze, or bear down on'. The Latin sense of forcing something flat or squeezing it carried straight into English in the 1300s, covering everything from crushing grapes to flattening cloth. From the physical act came the figurative one: to 'press' someone was to push them with urgency, which is why a busy adult is 'pressed for time'. The same 'premere' root sits inside relatives like 'pressure', 'compress', and 'express'. The spelling trap is simply the doubled 's' and the single '-ed' ending: writers tend to be sure of the double 's' but occasionally hesitate over whether the final sound is spelled '-ed' even though it is heard as a 't'.

How the word is built

• press (from Latin pressare: to push hard)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)