Troubled

How to spell troubled

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce troubled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does troubled mean?

1. adjectiveShowing or experiencing distress, anxiety, or difficulty.
2. verbPast tense of trouble: caused worry, distress, or inconvenience to someone.

Troubled in a sentence

• adjective

  She wore a troubled expression as she read the email.

• verb

  What troubled her most was the long silence afterward.

• adjective

  The firm went through a deeply troubled period before the buyout.

• verb

  The constant noise from the road troubled him for weeks.

Where does troubled come from?

Language of origin: French

This word descends from the verb 'trouble', which English borrowed from Old French 'trubler' or 'turbler' in the 1200s. The French form grew out of a Latin verb reconstructed as 'turbulare', itself from 'turbidus', meaning 'confused' or 'muddy', and ultimately from 'turba', which literally meant a crowd, a throng, or a commotion. So at its root the idea is of a disturbed, stirred-up state, much like cloudy water churned by a crowd. The same 'turba' family gives us 'turbid' (muddy), 'disturb', and 'turbulent', all sharing that sense of agitation. The tricky 'ou' spelling, pronounced as a short 'u' sound, is a leftover of the Old French route into English rather than the original Latin form, which is exactly why writers sometimes hesitate over it.

How the word is built

• trouble (from Latin turba: crowd, disorder)
• -ed (past tense / adjective suffix)