Supplied

How to spell supplied

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce supplied

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does supplied mean?

1. verbPast tense of supply: made something available or provided it to someone who needed it.

Supplied in a sentence

• The wholesaler supplied every restaurant on the street with fresh produce.

• Local volunteers supplied blankets and food after the flood.

Where does supplied come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of the verb supply, which traces back to the Latin verb supplere, meaning literally 'to fill up' or 'to complete'. That verb was built from the prefix sub-, here carrying the sense of 'from below' or 'up', joined to plere, meaning 'to fill', the same root that gives us 'complete', 'plenty' and 'replete'. English took the word in during the 1300s through Old French suppleer, and the early sense was about making good a shortfall or filling a gap, which is why we still 'supply' what is missing. Over time the meaning broadened to providing goods or resources of any kind. The spelling trap appears in the past tense: because supply ends in a consonant plus -y, the y turns to i before the -ed ending, giving 'supplied' rather than 'supplyed'.

How the word is built

• sup- (from sub-, meaning from below or up)
• ply (root from Latin plere, to fill)
• -ied (past-tense ending, with y changing to i before -ed)