Raced

How to spell raced

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce raced

What does raced mean?

1. verbPast tense of race: ran or moved very quickly, often to compete or to arrive in a hurry.
2. verbPast tense of race: (of the heart or pulse) beat unusually quickly.

Raced in a sentence

• The runners raced down the final straight to the finish line.

• His heart raced as the interview panel read out their verdict.

• She raced to the station to catch the early train.

• Her pulse raced when she saw the unexpected bill.

Where does raced come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the past tense of 'race', a word that English borrowed from Old Norse around the 1300s. The source was the noun 'ras', which meant a running, a rush of water, or a swift current, brought in by Scandinavian settlers. For its first few centuries in English the word kept that watery sense of a fast-moving channel, a meaning that survives in phrases like 'mill race' and 'tide race'. The sense of a contest of speed between competitors developed later, in the 1500s, and from there the verb 'to race' grew naturally. The simple spelling rarely causes trouble: the soft 'c' before 'e' gives the /s/ sound, and you just add '-ed', dropping nothing because 'race' already ends in a silent 'e'.

How the word is built

• race (from Old Norse ras: a running, a rush)
• -ed (past tense suffix)