Tried

How to spell tried

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tried

What does tried mean?

1. verbPast tense of try: made an attempt to do something.
2. verbPast tense of try: tested, sampled, or experienced something to judge it.
3. verbPast tense of try: subjected a person or case to examination in a court of law.

Tried in a sentence

• She tried to fix the leaking tap before calling a plumber.

• She tried the new restaurant and liked the food.

• The defendant was tried for fraud in the city court.

• We tried three different routes to avoid the traffic.

• He tried on several jackets before buying one.

• The case was tried before a jury last spring.

Where does tried come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of the verb 'try', which came into English in the 1200s from the Old French 'trier', meaning 'to pick out, sort, or sift'. The deeper origin is uncertain, though many trace it to a Latin source connected with separating grain from chaff or with legal examination. From the idea of sifting and sorting came the sense of testing or putting something to the proof, and from there the modern meanings of attempting and of examining a case in court. When 'try' takes the past tense ending, the final y turns into i before -ed, which is exactly the spelling step that produces 'tried' and the trap of accidentally writing the lookalike word 'tired'. The same sorting root survives in the legal noun 'trial' and in 'triage', the medical sorting of patients.

How the word is built

• try (to attempt or to test)
• -ed (past tense suffix), with the y changing to i