Laughed is the past tense and past participle of laugh, meaning to express mirth or amusement by vocalizing a sound and often a smile or chuckle. It denotes a completed act of laughter in the past and is commonly used to describe how someone reacted to something funny. The pronunciation is a short, closed syllable with a final /f/ or /d/? sound depending on phonetic context in connected speech.
"She laughed at the joke even though she’d heard it before."
"They’ve laughed about that mispronunciation many times."
"He laughed aloud when the comedian slipped on the stage."
"We’d laughed so hard that our sides hurt by the end of the story."
Laughed comes from the Old English laġian, with roots linked to the Proto-Germanic *hlah- which signified ‘to laugh’ or ‘to mock.’ The form evolved through Middle English as laȝen, later standardized to laughen and finally laughed in Early Modern English. The modern spelling reflects historical phonetic shifts (gh representing a velar fricative in older spellings) and the Great Vowel Shift’s influence on vowel quality. The first widely recorded uses appear in Middle English texts such as 'He laughen ful blythely' and later appear in Shakespearean and Victorian-era works, where the pronunciation settled toward the current /lɔːft/ or /læft/ in various dialects, with the final -ed indicating past tense. Over time, the pronunciation of the digraph 'gh' became largely silent in many dialects, while some regional forms maintained audible voicing, contributing to the diversity we observe today in pronunciation across accents.
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Words that rhyme with "Laughed"
-ted sounds
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Pronounce as /lɔːft/ in many dialects (US/UK) with an initial dental or alveolar onset followed by a long open-mid back vowel and a final voiceless /f/ or /t/ variant; in some US dialects you may hear /læft/ or /lɑːft/ depending on regional vowel shifts. The final consonant is often devoiced in connected speech. For clarity, start with a light, short 'lahff' and end sharply on a voiceless stop.
Common mistakes include pronouncing the final consonant as a voiced /d/ (as in 'laughed' with a /d/) instead of the voiceless /f/ or /t/ that often appears in rapid speech, and confusing vowel quality due to digraph gh. Another error is overpronouncing the /gh/ sequence; in many dialects it’s silent or greatly reduced. Correct by finishing with a crisp /f/ or a clear /t/ depending on the dialect, and keep the vowel short and backed.
US tends to have a varied vowel before the final consonant, often /ɔː/ or /ɑː/ depending on region, with final /t/ or /f/ in fast speech. UK typically uses /ɔː/ or /ɒ/ and a clear /t/ or /f/, with non-rhotic tendencies in some dialects, so the 'r' is not pronounced. Australian English often exhibits a more centralized or fronted vowel quality before the final /f/ or /t/ and may soften the final release. In all cases, the 'gh' is silent, and the ending is crisp and voiceless.
The difficulty stems from the final consonant cluster and the silent/voiceless ending after a voiced segment in some contexts. The 'augh' vowel can shift sounds across dialects (lɔːft vs læft), and the final /f/ or /t/ requires precise voiceless articulation following a vowel. Coarticulation with preceding consonants can blur the final sound in rapid speech, making it easy to mispronounce as 'laughed' with a voiced /d/ or as 'laft' with a different vowel.
A distinctive feature is the often-unstressed, reduced vowel quality in casual speech before the final /f/ or /t/, especially in rapid narration. Speakers may fuse the vowel to a more centralized sound, yielding a less distinct /ɔː/ or /ɒ/ depending on dialect, while maintaining a clear final voiceless stop or fricative. Paying attention to the transition from the vowel into the final consonant helps avoid a muffled ending.
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