absorbed

1. 1
   adjective

   Completely caught up in one's own thoughts or in an activity; engrossed.

   He was too absorbed in his work to hear the phone ringing.

   The audience sat absorbed, barely breathing during the final scene.

   Similarengrossed, immersed, rapt, preoccupied, captivated

   Oppositebored, distracted, uninterested

   Note

   The mind here is the sponge: attention is soaked up so completely that the world drops away. Its usual preposition is in, as in absorbed in a book or absorbed in experiments. Its natural intensifiers are deeply and fully, and it takes more and most, which marks it as a true gradable adjective. Compare the literal "soaked up" sense, which describes what was taken in rather than who.

2. 2
   adjective

   Taken in, soaked up, or assimilated into another substance or body.

   The absorbed moisture left the wooden beam swollen and warped.

   Doctors track how much of the absorbed drug reaches the bloodstream.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of absorb.

   The dry soil absorbed the heavy rain within minutes.

   The company absorbed three smaller firms last year.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs, simple past and past participle, because absorb takes the regular -ed ending. With have it forms the perfect (the soil has absorbed the rain); with be it forms the passive (the firms were absorbed). The passive can blur into the "engrossed" adjective. A degree word settles it: more absorbed is the adjective, while absorbed by something reports an action done to it.

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