Sped, speeded?

On the way home last night there somehow emerged a conversation about the verb ‘speed’ and whether its past tense was ‘sped’ or ‘speeded’, and whether there was even such a word as ‘speeded’… which I maintained there was. The thing is, once you start saying a word, and it keeps getting mentioned over and over, it begins to sound incorrect even when you think it is correct… This discussion took place as we weren’t speeding anywhere, we were stuck in a traffic jam caused by a fire on a lorry carrying dog food… As we passed the lorry, its contents spread all over the inside carriageway we could imagine all the wild creatures, badgers and foxes waiting in the undergrowth for the emergency vehicles to disappear, ready for a wonderful feast of discarded, cooked, doggie dinners!

The word comes, as you might expect from the sound of it, from Old English ‘spowan’ meaning to prosper or succeed, which then gradually became  ‘sped’ with a meaning associated with moving quickly. Now there are two sorts of moving quickly, one about the rate someone or something is moving, and the other meaning increasing the rate of movement or doing something.

As a noun ‘speed’ has a variety of senses, the rate at which someone or something moves or operates or is able to move or operate, the gear ratios of a bike, and in the context of photography a meaning to do with the length of time of a photographic exposure and how sensitive a photographic film is to light. These days it is also a nick-name for a certain type of drum. One use which has just about died out, is wishing someone or something good luck, as in ‘God speed’ – which goes back to the original Old English meaning to succeed or prosper!