Pumped

How to spell pumped

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pumped

What does pumped mean?

1. verbForced or drew a liquid, gas, or air using a pump, or moved something in a similar repeated motion.
2. adjectiveInformally, feeling very excited, eager, or full of energy about something.

Pumped in a sentence

• verb

  The firefighters pumped water out of the flooded basement for hours.

• adjective

  The whole team felt pumped about the new project launch.

• verb

  She pumped air into the flat tyre before the long drive.

• adjective

  He was pumped for the concert he had waited months to attend.

Where does pumped come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The verb 'pump' arrived in English in the 1400s, most likely from Middle Dutch or Low German 'pompe', a word for a device that draws or forces water, and the spelling has stayed close to that source ever since. Many scholars think the original word was imitative, echoing the dull thumping or sucking sound such a device makes, which is why parallel forms turn up across several northern European languages. Its earliest English uses were strongly nautical, since a ship's pump for clearing the bilge was vital equipment, and from there the sense broadened to any apparatus for moving fluids. By adding the regular '-ed' ending you get 'pumped', covering both the simple past and the participle, with no awkward doubling because 'pump' already ends in a consonant cluster. In modern informal speech the participle also took on the lively figurative sense of being filled with energy or excitement, as if charged up by a pump.

How the word is built

• pump (to force liquid, gas, or air with a pump)
• -ed (past tense and past participle suffix)