Tripped

How to spell tripped

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tripped

What does tripped mean?

1. verbCaught the foot on something and stumbled or lost balance.
2. verbSet off a switch, alarm, or automatic device, usually by accident.

Tripped in a sentence

• She tripped over the loose cable that ran across the office floor.

• The intruder tripped the alarm the moment he opened the back window.

• He tripped on the top step and only just caught the handrail.

• A sudden power surge tripped the circuit breaker in the kitchen.

Where does tripped come from?

Language of origin: French

The base verb 'trip' entered English in the 1300s from Old French 'triper' or 'treper', meaning 'to strike with the feet, to stamp or dance'. That Old French word was itself drawn from a Germanic source related to Middle Dutch 'trippen', 'to skip or hop'. The earliest English sense was the light, nimble one of dancing or stepping briskly, and the now familiar meaning of catching one's foot and stumbling grew from the same idea of quick foot movement. Over time 'trip' also gained the figurative sense of setting off a mechanism, as a moving part is knocked into action. The doubled 'p' in 'tripped' is the spelling trap: because 'trip' ends in a single vowel followed by a single consonant in a stressed syllable, the consonant doubles before the '-ed' ending.

How the word is built

• trip (to stumble or move lightly)
• -ped (past tense, with the final consonant doubled after a short stressed vowel)