Striped

How to spell striped

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce striped

What does striped mean?

1. adjectiveMarked or patterned with stripes, that is, bands of contrasting colour.

Striped in a sentence

• He wore a navy striped tie to the interview.

• The café had a cheerful striped awning over the door.

Where does striped come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This word grows from the noun 'stripe', a band or line of contrasting colour, which English took from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German 'strippe', meaning a strap or thin band. By adding the suffix '-ed', meaning 'having' or 'marked with', English formed an adjective describing anything patterned with such bands. The single 'p' is the key spelling point: it preserves the long vowel of 'stripe', which is exactly why 'striped' (rhymes with 'wiped') stays distinct from 'stripped' (rhymes with 'ripped'), where doubling the 'p' shortens the vowel. Because the base word ends in a silent 'e', the rule is to drop that 'e' before '-ed' rather than double the consonant, giving 'striped'. The pattern has been steady in English since the late Middle Ages, when textiles and heraldry made banded designs a common thing to describe.

How the word is built

• stripe (a band of colour)
• -ed (adjective suffix meaning 'having')