called

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of call.

   The manager called an urgent meeting just before lunch.

   He was called away by an unexpected family emergency.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty, for the simple past (she called yesterday) and the past participle (she has called twice), as regular -ed verbs do. The participle is especially useful in the naming construction: be called plus a name or label, as in her dog is called Lucky. There it sits close to named, and it reaches past proper names to labels for practices and ideas: that's called due diligence.

2. 2
   adjective

   Referred to by a particular name; or summoned or invited to attend.

   She introduced a colleague called Mariposa to the rest of the team.

   The contestants called to the stage waved at the cheering crowd.

   Similarnamed, invited, dubbed

   Oppositeuncalled

   Note

   Before a noun, the participle settles into an adjective that marks something as the product of a call: a called strike is a strike that has been called. It does not grade, so nothing is more called than something else, and its opposite is uncalled. Keep it apart from the past-tense verb: in a called strike there is no doer and no tense, only the resulting state.

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