Sharpened

How to spell sharpened

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sharpened

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sharpened mean?

1. verbMade an edge, point, or blade keen and able to cut; also made something clearer or more intense.

Sharpened in a sentence

• The chef sharpened every knife before the dinner service began.

• She sharpened her pencil and started the maths exam.

Where does sharpened come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of 'sharpen', which is built from the very old English adjective 'sharp', recorded in Old English as 'scearp' with the literal sense of something cutting, pointed, or keen. That adjective belongs to a wider Germanic family, with close relatives such as Dutch 'scherp' and German 'scharf', all carrying the idea of a keen edge. The verb-forming suffix '-en' was added to turn the quality 'sharp' into the action of making something sharp, the same pattern seen in 'darken', 'harden', and 'lengthen'. The final '-ed' is the regular past tense and past participle ending. The spelling stays phonetically tidy: 'sharp' plus 'en' plus 'ed', so the trap for adults is mostly remembering the single 'p' and the unstressed middle '-en-' that the voice barely sounds.

How the word is built

• sharp (Old English scearp: cutting, keen)
• -en (suffix forming verbs from adjectives)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)