Strung

How to spell strung

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce strung

What does strung mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of 'string': threaded onto a line, fitted with strings, or hung up along something.

Strung in a sentence

• She strung the wooden beads onto a length of fishing line.

• The technician had strung fresh wires across the new guitar.

Where does strung come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Strung is the irregular past tense and past participle of 'string', which descends from the Old English noun 'streng', meaning a line, cord, or rope, the same word that gives us the modern noun 'string'. The Germanic root behind it is connected to the idea of something drawn taut or stretched tight, and it is a cousin of 'strong' and 'strength', which share the sense of being tightly bound or firm. When 'string' became a verb, meaning to fit with strings or to thread things together, English speakers gave it a 'sing, sang, sung' style pattern, so the past forms became 'strung' rather than the regular 'stringed'. The interesting spelling trap is that the vowel collapses to a short 'u' sound while the consonant cluster 'str' and the final 'ng' stay put, so the word is written with a single u and no silent letters. The older musical and archery senses, such as a strung bow or a strung violin, kept the form alive and explain why we still speak of being 'highly strung' today.

How the word is built

• strung is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'string', formed by an internal vowel change (ablaut) rather than by adding a regular -ed ending