Tipped

How to spell tipped

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tipped

What does tipped mean?

1. verbPast tense of tip: to lean, overbalance, or cause to fall over.
2. verbPast tense of tip: to give a small extra payment for service.
3. verbPast tense of tip: to name as likely to win or succeed.

Tipped in a sentence

• The heavy load tipped the trailer onto its side.

• They tipped the waiter twenty per cent after the meal.

• The pundits tipped her as the next chief executive.

• She tipped the jug forward to pour the last of the milk.

• He always tipped the hotel porter for carrying the bags.

• Most analysts tipped that team to win the league.

Where does tipped come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is the past tense of the verb 'tip', a word with a tangled and somewhat uncertain history. The 'tilt or topple' sense appears in English from around the 1300s and may be related to Scandinavian forms or to Low German, where similar words described a light push or a point. A separate 'tip' meaning the pointed end of something came from Old Norse 'typpi' and Middle Dutch 'tip', meaning an extremity or peak. The 'give a small gratuity' sense is much later, emerging in the 1700s, possibly from the slang sense of 'tip' meaning to hand over or pass something quietly. Because the root vowel is short and stressed, the final 'p' doubles before the '-ed' ending, which is the usual reason this spelling trips people who forget the second 'p'.

How the word is built

• tip (verb root)
• -ped (past tense -ed, with the final consonant doubled after a short stressed vowel)