Stirred

How to spell stirred

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stirred

What does stirred mean?

1. verbMoved a liquid or mixture around with a spoon or utensil, or roused a feeling or reaction.

Stirred in a sentence

• She stirred the soup slowly so it would not stick to the pan.

• He stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee before sitting down.

Where does stirred come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'stir', which descends from the Old English styrian, meaning 'to move, to agitate, or to rouse'. That verb belonged to a family of Germanic words concerned with putting things into motion, and it kept this broad sense of disturbance and movement as it passed into Middle English. Over the centuries 'stir' developed both a physical sense (moving a spoon through a liquid) and a figurative one (rousing feelings or causing commotion, as in 'stirring up trouble'). The spelling trap lives in the ending: because 'stir' is a short word ending in a single stressed vowel plus consonant, the final r doubles before -ed, giving the double-r form 'stirred' rather than the incorrect single-r 'stired'. The same doubling rule shapes relatives such as 'blurred' and 'whirred'.

How the word is built

• stir (to move or mix)
• doubled r
• -ed (past tense suffix)