Smoked

How to spell smoked

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce smoked

What does smoked mean?

1. verbPast tense of smoke: gave off smoke, inhaled tobacco fumes, or cured food in smoke.
2. adjectiveCured or flavoured by exposure to smoke, or darkened in the manner of smoke.

Smoked in a sentence

• verb

  He smoked a cigar on the balcony after dinner.

• adjective

  The deli sells smoked salmon by the slice every morning.

• verb

  The damp bonfire smoked for hours without ever catching alight.

• adjective

  She chose smoked glass for the conservatory to cut the glare.

Where does smoked come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English verb smocian and the related noun smoca, meaning the grey vapour that rises from burning material. Those forms came from a Germanic root shared with the Dutch smoken and the German schmauchen, all pointing back to an ancient sense of something smouldering or giving off fumes. The verb 'to smoke' carried several strands of meaning over the centuries: to give off smoke, to cure food in smoke, and from the 1600s to draw tobacco fumes into the mouth. 'Smoked' is simply the regular past tense and past participle, formed by adding -ed, and the same form doubles as an adjective for food preserved over smoke, as in smoked salmon. Because the base ends in a silent 'e', the spelling keeps that 'e' and adds only 'd', so the trap is remembering it is 'smoked', not 'smokt'.

How the word is built

• smoke (from Old English smoca: smoke, vapour)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)