Tapped

How to spell tapped

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tapped

What does tapped mean?

1. verbStruck or touched something quickly and lightly, in the past tense.
2. verbDrew on or made use of a resource, supply, or store of value.
3. verbSecretly connected to a telephone or communication line in order to listen in.

Tapped in a sentence

• She tapped the table impatiently while waiting for the meeting to start.

• The company tapped its reserves to cover the unexpected shortfall.

• Investigators discovered that the suspect's phone had been tapped for months.

• He tapped me gently on the shoulder to get my attention.

• The recruiter tapped a network of former colleagues to fill the role.

• The agency tapped the line without a warrant, which made the evidence inadmissible.

Where does tapped come from?

Language of origin: French

The base verb 'tap' meaning 'to strike lightly' arrived in English from the Old French 'taper', which meant 'to hit or strike' and was probably imitative of the soft sound of a gentle blow. A separate but identically spelled 'tap', the one meaning a faucet or a plug for drawing liquid from a barrel, descends from the Old English 'tæppa', a Germanic word for a stopper, and that sense gave us expressions like tapping a keg and later tapping a phone line or a source of money. By the time these words settled into modern English the two strands were spelled the same way, and both run their past tense through the regular '-ed' ending. Because 'tap' ends in a single consonant after a short stressed vowel, that final 'p' doubles before the ending, producing 'tapped'; the doubling is the whole spelling trap, since the word sounds exactly like the unrelated 'taped', the past tense of 'tape'. Keeping the double 'p' in mind is what separates striking something lightly (tapped) from fastening or recording it (taped).

How the word is built

• tap (strike lightly / draw from)
• -ped (past tense -ed with the single final consonant doubled after a short stressed vowel)