Teamed

How to spell teamed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce teamed

What does teamed mean?

1. verbPast tense of team: combined with one or more others to work, play, or pair together for a shared purpose.

Teamed in a sentence

• The two firms teamed up to bid for the rail contract.

• She teamed a tailored blazer with dark jeans for the interview.

Where does teamed come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of the verb 'team', which descends from the Old English noun 'team', meaning offspring, a brood, or a set of draught animals harnessed and pulling together. That noun was tied to the Old English verb 'teon', meaning to pull or to draw, so the earliest sense centred on animals yoked side by side to haul a load. From the idea of beasts harnessed in concert came the figurative sense of people joining forces, and by the modern era 'to team' (often 'team up') meant to combine effort with others. The word is purely Germanic in stock, sharing roots across the old Germanic languages. Its everyday spelling trap is not the ending but the vowel, since it sounds exactly like 'teemed', the past tense of 'teem' (to be full of), and the two are easily swapped in writing.

How the word is built

• team (a group working or pulling together)
• -ed (past tense suffix)