owed
/oʊd/adjective, verb
owed is an adjective meaning “That owes” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled O-W-E-D and has one syllable, and it appears 7.2 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does owed mean?
adjective
- 1
That owes.
verb
- 1
simple past and past participle of owe
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce owed?
- US /oʊd/
- UK /əʊd/
- /oːd/
Owed has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-owed.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of owed
- more owed comparative
- most owed superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is owed?
Owed appears 7.2 times per million words in written English, the 8,784th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Words people confuse with owed
Sounds like: ode (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Owed in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Translations:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Spanish | adeudado |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.