Smashed

How to spell smashed

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce smashed

What does smashed mean?

1. verbPast tense of smash: broke something violently into pieces, or struck it with great force.
2. adjectiveBroken into many pieces as a result of a violent impact.

Smashed in a sentence

• verb

  The falling shelf smashed every plate in the cabinet.

• adjective

  The smashed phone screen was beyond any repair.

• verb

  He smashed his thumb with the hammer while fixing the fence.

• adjective

  She swept up the smashed glass from the kitchen floor.

Where does smashed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word smash appeared in English in the early 1700s, and its origin is genuinely uncertain, so it is best treated as a probable native imitative coinage. Many scholars suspect it is a blend of words such as smack and mash, both older English terms for striking or crushing, and the blunt cluster of consonants in smash does seem designed to sound like the noise of something breaking. Some have also pointed to a possible link with Old Norse and other Scandinavian words for striking, though that connection is far from settled. The -ed ending is the ordinary English suffix that turns a verb into its past tense and past participle, and because smash already ends in a hard sh sound, the ending is simply pronounced as a crisp t. The later slang sense of smashed, meaning very drunk, grew up in the twentieth century, extending the idea of being broken or wrecked to a person.

How the word is built

• smash (to break violently)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)