Suppressed

How to spell suppressed

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce suppressed

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does suppressed mean?

1. verbHeld back, kept from being expressed, or forcibly put down.
2. adjectiveKept hidden, restrained, or prevented from surfacing.

Suppressed in a sentence

• verb

  The government suppressed the report before the election.

• adjective

  Years of suppressed anger finally surfaced at the reunion.

• verb

  She suppressed a yawn during the long meeting.

• adjective

  The suppressed evidence was never shown to the jury.

Where does suppressed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb supprimere, meaning 'to press down' or 'to hold back', formed from sub- 'under' and premere 'to press'. Its past participle was suppressus, which is exactly where the doubled 'p' and the 'ss' spelling come from: the sub- prefix assimilated to sup- before the 'p' of premere, leaving two p's, and the participle ending hardened the stem into a 'ss' sound. English took the word in during the late 1300s and 1400s, first in the sense of putting down a revolt or holding back a feeling, and it shares its premere root with a whole family of pressing words such as 'press', 'compress', 'depress', and 'express'. The classic spelling trap is remembering that there is a double 'p' (from sup-) and a double 's' before the '-ed', not just one of each.

How the word is built

• sup- (assimilated form of sub-: under, down)
• press (from premere: to press)
• -ed (past tense / participle)