Winged

How to spell winged

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce winged

What does winged mean?

1. adjectiveHaving wings, or shaped or decorated to suggest wings.
2. verbPast tense of 'wing': to wound slightly, to fling, or to do something without preparation.

Winged in a sentence

• adjective

  The museum displayed a bronze winged figure of victory.

• verb

  With no notes ready, she simply winged the entire presentation.

• adjective

  A winged insect kept tapping against the office window.

• verb

  The hunter only winged the duck, and it limped away across the marsh.

Where does winged come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base word 'wing' came into English from Old Norse, where the plural form vaengir referred to the wings of a bird; Norse settlers brought it to England during the Viking age, and by the 1100s and 1200s it had largely replaced the older native English term. The adjective 'winged', meaning 'having wings', was formed by adding the suffix -ed, the same ending that turns a noun into a description of something equipped with that feature (compare 'horned' or 'feathered'). In poetry the word is sometimes given two syllables, pronounced 'wing-ed', a deliberately archaic flourish heard in phrases such as 'winged victory'. The same -ed also serves as the past tense of the verb 'to wing', which developed later and can mean to wound a bird in the wing or, more informally, to improvise. The spelling stays refreshingly regular: keep the single 'g' of 'wing' and simply add -ed, with no doubling.

How the word is built

• wing (from Old Norse vaengr: wing)
• -ed (suffix marking possession of a feature, or past tense)