Rolled

How to spell rolled

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rolled

What does rolled mean?

1. verbMoved or turned something over by revolving it, or moved along on wheels or by turning.
2. adjectiveFormed or processed by being rolled, as in flattened or wound up.

Rolled in a sentence

• verb

  She rolled the dough flat before cutting the biscuits.

• adjective

  The recipe calls for a cup of rolled oats.

• verb

  The ball rolled across the floor and stopped under the desk.

• adjective

  The watch case was made of rolled gold rather than solid gold.

Where does rolled come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'roll', a verb that travelled into English through Old French 'roller' and 'rolle', which came in turn from the Latin 'rotulus', meaning 'a little wheel' or 'a small roll'. That Latin word was a diminutive of 'rota', the ordinary word for a wheel, and the same root survives in modern words such as 'rotate', 'rotary' and 'control'. The earliest English uses, from the 1300s, referred both to the action of turning something over and over and to a 'roll' of parchment wound around a stick. Over time the verb gathered countless concrete senses, from rolling dough to rolling a vehicle forward. The doubled 'l' before the '-ed' ending is the small spelling trap: because the single-syllable 'roll' already ends in two l's, that pair is kept intact when the suffix is added.

How the word is built

• roll (to turn over, from Latin rotulus 'little wheel')
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)