Solved

How to spell solved

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce solved

What does solved mean?

1. verbFound the answer to or successfully dealt with a problem, puzzle, or difficulty.

Solved in a sentence

• The engineer solved the leak before the meeting started.

• She finally solved the crossword after an hour of staring at it.

Where does solved come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'solve', which comes from the Latin verb solvere, meaning 'to loosen', 'to release', or 'to untie'. The Romans formed it from se- ('apart' or 'away') and luere ('to loosen' or 'to pay'), so the literal idea was of freeing something that had been bound up. English took the word in the 1400s, at first in the sense of loosening or dissolving, and only later in the figurative sense of untying a difficult problem or puzzle. The same Latin root still surfaces in relatives such as 'dissolve', 'resolve', and 'absolve', all of which carry that core notion of loosening or releasing. Because the verb ends in a single consonant after a consonant cluster, the past tense simply adds -ed without any doubling, which keeps the spelling regular.

How the word is built

• solv- (from Latin solvere: to loosen, release)
• -ed (past tense suffix)