Tagged

How to spell tagged

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tagged

What does tagged mean?

1. verbAttached a label, marker, or identifier to something or someone, or recorded such an attachment.

Tagged in a sentence

• The warehouse staff tagged every parcel before it left the loading bay.

• She tagged a colleague in the group photo she shared online.

Where does tagged come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base word 'tag' first appears in late Middle English, around the 1400s, where it referred to a small hanging piece or a dangling point at the end of a lace or strap. Its ultimate origin is uncertain, though many scholars link it to a Scandinavian source, comparing it with Norwegian and Swedish dialect words for a tuft, point, or ragged end. Over the centuries the meaning broadened from a physical dangling tab to any small attached label, and then to the act of attaching such a label, which gave us the verb 'to tag'. The past tense and past participle 'tagged' simply add the regular '-ed' ending, and because 'tag' ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant, that final 'g' is doubled before the ending, which is the spelling point worth remembering. In the digital age the verb gained a fresh life, since marking a person or an item in an online post is also described as having tagged them, carrying the old idea of attaching a label straight into modern usage.

How the word is built

• tag (root: a label or marker)
• -g- (doubled consonant)
• -ed (past tense/past participle suffix)