Sprayed

How to spell sprayed

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sprayed

What does sprayed mean?

1. verbApplied or scattered liquid in a cloud of fine droplets, in the past.

Sprayed in a sentence

• The gardener sprayed the roses to kill the greenfly.

• She sprayed a little perfume on her wrists before the meeting.

Where does sprayed come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The verb 'spray' goes back to Middle English and is closely tied to the Middle Dutch 'sprayen', which meant 'to sprinkle' or 'to scatter in tiny drops'. That word belongs to a wider family of Germanic words for bursting or strewing something outward, the same impulse behind 'sprout' and 'spread'. By the seventeenth century English speakers were using 'spray' for a mist of fine liquid driven through the air, whether sea foam or scent. The everyday meaning, to force liquid out in a cloud of droplets, settled firmly once mechanical sprayers and atomisers became common. The past tense simply adds the regular '-ed', so the only thing to watch in writing is keeping the 'ay' of the base word before that ending: spray becomes sprayed, not 'spraid'.

How the word is built

• spray (root: scatter liquid in fine droplets)
• -ed (past-tense suffix)