Slammed

How to spell slammed

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce slammed

What does slammed mean?

1. verbShut or struck something with sudden, noisy force.
2. verbCriticised someone or something severely and publicly.
3. adjectiveInformal: overwhelmed with work or demands and very busy.

Slammed in a sentence

• verb

  She slammed the car door and stormed into the house.

• verb

  The reviewers slammed the restaurant for its slow service.

• adjective

  The kitchen was completely slammed during the lunch rush.

• verb

  The wind slammed the window shut during the storm.

• verb

  Local residents slammed the council over the parking changes.

• adjective

  The whole team was totally slammed at the office all week.

Where does slammed come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base verb 'slam' first appears in English in the late 1600s, and its likeliest source is Scandinavian: compare the Old Norse and dialectal Norwegian 'slemma', meaning to strike or bang noisily. The word is partly imitative, its very sound echoing the sharp, abrupt noise of a door or lid crashing shut. From that physical sense of striking with violent force, the figurative meaning grew: by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries 'to slam' someone meant to attack them harshly in words or print. The form 'slammed' simply adds the regular past-tense ending, but note the doubled 'm': because 'slam' ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant, that final consonant doubles before '-ed', which is the spelling point worth remembering.

How the word is built

• slam (to shut or strike with force)
• -med (doubled m
• -ed past tense)