baked

1. 1
   adjective

   Cooked in an oven by dry, surrounding heat rather than by frying or boiling.

   The baked salmon flaked apart at the touch of a fork.

   A platter of baked vegetables sat at the center of the table.

   Similarroasted

   Note

   The kitchen adjective has a darker past than menus suggest. In Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (c. 1588–1593), Titus reveals two men "both baked in that pie" their mother has just eaten. Before a noun it works as a plain adjective (baked potatoes). After be it blurs into the past participle (the pie was baked). It can even take degrees, more baked and most baked, for how far the baking has gone.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of bake.

   The neighbors baked dozens of pies for the harvest fair.

   The loaves were baked in a wood-fired oven overnight.

   Note

   One regular form does double duty: the plain past (she baked bread) and the participle after have or be (it has baked, it was baked). Because bake can also be intransitive, the bread baked and the bread was baked both work and mean nearly the same. It takes two objects too (she baked him a cake), and it stretches figuratively to heat: the streets baked all afternoon.

3. 3
   adjectiveslang

   Intoxicated: drunk on alcohol, or high or stoned from drugs.

   She showed up to the late showing already baked.

   They got baked at the festival and forgot where they parked the car.

   Similarstoned, intoxicated, high, toasted

   Oppositesober

   Note

   Slang that borrows the oven for the mind: like cooked and toasted, it pictures someone heated right through. It covers alcohol and drugs alike, and it sits naturally after get or be: got baked, already baked. Keep it to casual talk; in anything formal, intoxicated is the word. Cooked shadows nearly every slang sense of this word, from the hangover to madness.

4. 4
   adjectiveslangderogatoryfiguratively

   Of a person, mentally unbalanced; crazy or insane.

   Her so-called rescue plan was the idea of someone completely baked.

   He's baked if he thinks anyone will sign off on that.

   Similarcrazy, insane, bonkers, nuts, batty

   Oppositesane

   Note

   Here no drug is needed: the heat image has moved on to the mind itself, and the word simply calls someone crazy. It is slang and derogatory, an insult rather than a description, so it does not belong in talk about real mental illness. It sits close to the drug-damaged meaning, which at least names a cause.

5. 5
   adjective

   Suffering the unpleasant aftereffects of having drunk too much alcohol.

   The whole crew showed up baked and bleary the morning after the celebration.

   She nursed a black coffee, baked from one too many glasses of wine.

   Similarhungover

   Note

   The morning after the intoxicated meaning: the same word now describes the damage rather than the state. Context does the separating. Baked at the party means drunk or high; baked at breakfast means paying for it. Cooked does the same double work, so either word needs a time frame to be read correctly.

6. 6
   adjective

   Permanently brain-damaged from drug use, whether genuinely so or only allegedly.

   Decades of addiction had left the old rocker permanently baked, unable to follow a conversation.

   His old bandmates whispered that he'd been baked since his twenties, his mind dulled by years of drugs.

   Similarfried

   Note

   Where the intoxicated meaning wears off by morning, this one is meant to last: the damage of years, not of a night. It usually names its cause with from, as in baked from all the coke he used to do. It is often more accusation than diagnosis, said of someone who is only allegedly ruined by drugs.

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