Rushed

How to spell rushed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rushed

What does rushed mean?

1. verbMoved or acted with great speed, often because of limited time.
2. adjectiveDone too quickly and without enough care or time.

Rushed in a sentence

• verb

  She rushed to the station to catch the last train home.

• adjective

  The report felt rushed and contained several careless errors.

• verb

  The paramedics rushed him to the nearest hospital.

• adjective

  A rushed decision about the mortgage cost them thousands.

Where does rushed come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past form of the verb 'rush', which arrived in Middle English as 'rushen' or 'ruschen' from Anglo-Norman French 'russher', a variant of the Old French verb 'ruser', meaning 'to drive back, put to flight, or repel'. That French verb traces further back to the Latin 'recusare', meaning 'to refuse' or 'to push away', built on 'causa' (a cause or legal case). Curiously, the same Old French 'ruser' also gave English the word 'ruse', a trick or stratagem, because deceiving an enemy and driving them off were closely linked ideas. Over time the sense of forceful driving softened into the modern meaning of moving or doing something with urgent speed, and the regular '-ed' ending simply marks the past, giving the predictable spelling 'rushed' with a single final consonant.

How the word is built

• rush (to move or act with great haste)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)