Styled

How to spell styled

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce styled

What does styled mean?

1. verbDesigned, arranged, or gave a particular form or appearance to something.
2. verbDesignated or called by a particular name, title, or description.

Styled in a sentence

• The designer styled the lobby with warm lighting and oak panels.

• The new model is styled a hybrid, though it runs mostly on petrol.

• She styled her hair before the interview.

• He styled himself a consultant after leaving the firm.

Where does styled come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past form of the verb 'style', which traces back to the Latin word stilus, the name for the pointed metal instrument the Romans used to scratch letters into wax tablets. Because a writer's stilus produced a recognisable hand, the word drifted from the physical tool to the abstract idea of a person's distinctive manner of writing, and then to manner and fashion in a much broader sense. English took the word in through Old French during the Middle Ages, and along the way the spelling was wrongly linked to the unrelated Greek stulos meaning 'pillar', which is why the 'y' settled in where the original Latin had an 'i'. By the 1500s 'style' had spawned the verb meaning to design, arrange, or give a particular form to something, and 'styled' is simply its regular past tense. The spelling trap is small but real: the silent 'e' of 'style' is kept before the '-ed', so it is 'styled' rather than 'stiled' or 'styld'.

How the word is built

• styl- (from Latin stilus: writing tool, manner of writing)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)