bugged

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of bug.

   The constant phone alerts bugged him throughout the meeting.

   Investigators bugged the suspect's apartment before the raid.

   Note

   One spelling serves a whole family of verbs, and the transitive ones behave differently from the rest. Annoying someone and planting listening devices both take an object, so both form passives: he was bugged by the alerts, the room was bugged. The intransitive verbs, acting irrationally and bulging, have no passive, and their participle appears only after have. The eavesdropping passive is where the hidden-microphone adjective comes from.

2. 2
   adjective

   Affected by a software error that causes a program or system to behave incorrectly.

   The bugged release was pulled after users reported lost data.

   Players complained that the update left the game bugged and unplayable.

   Similarbuggy

   Note

   Software takes this adjective by degrees. A release can be slightly or extremely bugged, and the comparative and superlative are regular: more bugged, most bugged. Buggy is its synonym and carries the same meaning. Context has to separate it from the surveillance sense, because a bugged phone may be malfunctioning or wiretapped. In writing about devices, buggy avoids that ambiguity.

3. 3
   adjective

   Fitted with a concealed device for secretly listening to or recording conversations.

   The diplomat refused to speak freely in the bugged suite.

   Security swept the boardroom after staff suspected it was bugged.

   Similarwiretapped, tapped, wired

Showing meanings only. Show all 3