Said

How to spell said

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce said

What does said mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of 'say': uttered or expressed something in words.
2. adjectiveUsed before a noun to refer to something or someone already mentioned, common in legal and formal writing.

Said in a sentence

• verb

  She said very little during the entire meeting.

• adjective

  The contract names the tenant, and the said tenant must pay rent monthly.

• verb

  The manager said the report was due on Friday.

• adjective

  The said vehicle was parked illegally on the day in question.

Where does said come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of 'say', which descends from the Old English verb secgan, meaning 'to utter, to speak, to tell'. That verb belonged to the same family as the Old Norse segja and the Dutch zeggen, all tracing back to a Germanic root meaning 'to point out' or 'to declare'. The past form was originally something like saegde, which over centuries smoothed into the modern 'said'. The spelling is a classic English trap: the letters 'ai' would normally suggest the long vowel heard in 'paid' or 'maid', yet 'said' is pronounced with a short /e/ as in 'bed', a mismatch left over from older pronunciation that has since shifted. The closely related word 'says' shares the same odd vowel, and remembering that 'said' rhymes with 'red' rather than 'paid' is the surest way to keep the spelling straight.

How the word is built

• irregular past tense and past participle of 'say' (Old English secgan); the spelling preserves the -ai- vowel that no longer matches its short /e/ sound