Snatched

How to spell snatched

8 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce snatched

What does snatched mean?

1. verbTook hold of something quickly and forcefully, often unexpectedly.
2. adjectiveIn informal modern slang, looking extremely attractive, stylish, or well put together.

Snatched in a sentence

• verb

  The thief snatched her handbag and ran down the street.

• adjective

  Her outfit at the party looked absolutely snatched.

• verb

  He snatched the last seat on the crowded train.

• adjective

  After the new haircut he felt completely snatched.

Where does snatched come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of 'snatch', a word that first appears in Middle English around the 1200s as 'snacchen', meaning to seize or grab something quickly. Its exact roots are uncertain, but it is generally linked to the Low German and Middle Dutch word 'snacken', meaning to snap, snatch, or chatter, which also points to a sense of a quick snapping motion of the mouth or hand. The word kept company with 'snack', which originally meant a snapping bite before it softened into the sense of a light meal. Over the centuries the spelling settled with the 'tch' cluster typical of short, sharp English action words like 'catch', 'fetch', and 'latch', and adding the regular '-ed' ending gives the doubled-sounding but single-t 'snatched'. In very recent slang it has also taken on the meaning of looking strikingly attractive or well put together, a sense that grew out of online and fashion culture in the 2010s.

How the word is built

• snatch (to grab suddenly)
• -ed (past tense suffix)