tensed


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Related to tensed: tensed up

tense 1

 (tĕns)
adj. tens·er, tens·est
1. Tightly stretched; taut. See Synonyms at stiff, tight.
2.
a. In a state of nervous tension or mental strain: was very tense before the exam.
b. Causing or characterized by nervous tension or mental strain: a tense standoff between border patrols.
3. Linguistics Enunciated with taut muscles, as the sound (ē) in keen.
tr. & intr.v. tensed, tens·ing, tens·es
To make or become tense.

[Latin tēnsus, past participle of tendere, to stretch; see ten- in Indo-European roots.]

tense′ly adv.
tense′ness n.

tense 2

 (tĕns)
n. Grammar
1. A property of verbs in which the time of the action or state, as well as its continuance or completion, is indicated or expressed.
2. A category or set of verb forms that indicate or express the time, such as past, present, or future, of the action or state.

[Middle English tens, from Old French, time, from Latin tempus.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adj.1.tensed - having inflections to indicate tense
finite - of verbs; relating to forms of the verb that are limited in time by a tense and (usually) show agreement with number and person
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
References in classic literature ?
Instantly Tarzan tensed to the shock of a sudden fear.
To the stake they led him, and as they pushed him roughly against it preparatory to binding him there securely for the dance of death that would presently encircle him, Tarzan tensed his mighty thews and with a single, powerful wrench parted the loosened thongs which had secured his hands.
Paulvitch half rose, and with tensed muscles stood glaring down upon his unsuspecting victim.
The smiling lips tensed to the nervous shock of a momentary agony which the conscious mind never apprehended, and then the dead sank limply back into that deepest of slumbers from which there is no awakening.
When you are watching you are so tensed. But, thankfully this season, she didn't make me that stressed out.
In recent years the idea that perceptual content is tensed, in the sense that we can perceive objects as present or as past, has come under attack.
While there was consistent superiority for neutral sentences over tensed sentences, the differences between past, present, and future sentences were inconsistent across tasks and primarily driven by the sentence production priming task.
Untensed propositions are sets of worlds, while tensed propositions are sets of world-time pairs.
Having lost the final twice in the last three years, Youzhny tensed up somewhat as Cilic stormed back at him in the second set.
If, as Brooks himself has argued, past tense verbs can be decoded as a quasi-present, it follows that there can be no straightforward or precise relation between the tense of a verb and the time to which it refers, and the severing of this relationship makes it as possible to live the present in a mode of envisaged retrospect as to experience events tensed as past as a kind of present.
The latter inflected form is the marker of another variety of subjunctive, not a simple preterite tense marker (Anderson 2004a: [section] 3.3), nor a tensed subjunctive.
The frequency of tensed finite forms in 10 French language journal articles on biological sciences is examined.