Relieved

How to spell relieved

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce relieved

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does relieved mean?

1. adjectiveFeeling reassured and free from anxiety or worry after a stressful situation has passed.
2. verbPast tense of relieve: eased a burden or pain, or freed someone from a duty or position.

Relieved in a sentence

• adjective

  She felt deeply relieved when the test results came back clear.

• verb

  The new medication relieved his back pain within an hour.

• adjective

  He was visibly relieved once the final payment cleared the account.

• verb

  The night nurse relieved her colleague at the end of the shift.

Where does relieved come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb relevare, which literally meant 'to raise again' or 'to lighten', built from the prefix re- and levare, meaning 'to lift'. The underlying idea was that a burden pressing down on someone could be physically lifted off, and from that came the figurative sense of easing pain, worry, or hardship. English took the verb through Old French relever during the medieval period, and 'relieved' is simply its past tense and participle, formed with the regular -ed ending. The same levare root survives in everyday relatives such as 'elevate', 'lever', and 'levity', all of which carry that core notion of lightness or lifting. Because the stem ends in the vowel-like 'ieve' cluster, the spelling follows the classic 'i before e' pattern that often trips writers, and the silent flow from 'lieve' into the added -ed is where errors tend to creep in.

How the word is built

• re- (back, again)
• liev (from Latin levare: to lift, lighten)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)