Sealed

How to spell sealed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sealed

What does sealed mean?

1. verbClosed something firmly or made it airtight or watertight, in the past.
2. adjectiveClosed so firmly that nothing can get in or out.

Sealed in a sentence

• verb

  She sealed the envelope before dropping it in the post box.

• adjective

  The documents arrived in a sealed envelope marked private.

• verb

  The builders sealed the cracks around the window to stop draughts.

• adjective

  Food keeps longer in a sealed container in the fridge.

Where does sealed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the noun 'seal', which English took from Old French 'seel' in the 1200s, itself from the Latin 'sigillum', meaning a little figure, mark, or stamp. That Latin word was a diminutive of 'signum', meaning a sign or mark, the same root that gives us 'sign' and 'signal'. A seal was originally the wax impression pressed onto a document to mark it as genuine and to close it shut, so the verb naturally grew to mean closing something so tightly that nothing can pass. The 'ea' spelling reflects the long vowel sound the word settled into in Middle English, and it is that quiet 'ea' (rather than the simpler 'ee') that occasionally trips writers up. By the time the past form 'sealed' was in steady use, the word covered both fastening a letter and making any container airtight.

How the word is built

• seal (from Latin sigillum: a small mark or stamp)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)