Swapped

How to spell swapped

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce swapped

What does swapped mean?

1. verbPast tense of swap: gave one thing and received another in exchange.

Swapped in a sentence

• They swapped seats so the children could sit together.

• She swapped her early shift for a later one at work.

Where does swapped come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'swap', which began in Middle English as 'swappen', meaning to strike or to hit. The connection to exchange comes from the old custom of striking or slapping hands together to seal a bargain, so 'to swap' first meant to clinch a deal with a smack of the palm and only later settled into its modern sense of trading one thing for another. The word is probably imitative in origin, echoing the sound of a sharp blow, and it belongs to the broad family of native Germanic vocabulary in English. The doubled p in 'swapped' follows the regular English rule that a short stressed vowel ending in a single consonant doubles that consonant before the -ed ending, which is the same pattern seen in 'tapped' and 'stopped'. That doubling is the only real spelling decision the writer has to make.

How the word is built

• swap (to exchange)
• -ped (past tense, with the final p doubled after a short vowel)