canned

1. 1
   adjective

   Preserved and sealed inside a metal can.

   The pantry was stocked with canned tomatoes and tuna for the winter.

   Many canned vegetables retain a good portion of their nutrients.

   Similartinned

   Oppositefresh

   Note

   The literal kitchen sense, and the one the figurative uses lean on. Its natural opposite is fresh, and once the food is understood it can stand alone: no fresh cardoon, so you'll take canned. It is a yes-or-no category, so it is never compared. Nothing is more canned than something else. That flat sameness of sealed, ready-made food is what the 'stale, ready-made' meaning borrows.

2. 2
   adjective

   Prepared in advance and reused rather than created fresh; standardized, mass-produced, and lacking originality.

   The company sent a canned response that ignored my actual complaint.

   His toast sounded canned, as if he had delivered it a hundred times before.

   Similarstock, formulaic, rehearsed, scripted

   Oppositespontaneous, unscripted

   Note

   Anything made once and served many times: canned laughter in place of a live audience, a canned answer in a form letter, the canned code Visual C++ hands a programmer in Dr. Dobb's Journal (1998). The word nearly always complains, because the canned thing is generic where something made for the occasion was wanted. Paul Heaton and Dave Rotheray's “Liar's Bar” (1996) sets it against real, leaving it open whether the laughter is genuine or not.

3. 3
   adjective

   Dismissed from a job by an employer; fired.

   She was canned for leaking confidential files to a competitor.

   Two managers got canned in the weeks after the merger.

   Similarfired, sacked, dismissed

4. 4
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of can.

   The factory canned thousands of fish each day during the season.

   She canned the extra vegetables to save them for winter.

   Note

   Regular in every way, and that is the point. The auxiliary can of "I can swim" is defective and takes no -ed ending at all. Canned belongs to the ordinary verb, the one that puts food into cans. The same spelling serves both the past tense and the participle: she canned the beans; the beans were canned; she has canned them.

5. 5
   adjective

   Canceled or discarded, said of a project or a news article.

   The miniseries was canned halfway through filming when the studio lost interest.

   Several planned segments were canned before the broadcast went live.

   Similaraxed, cancelled, dropped

   Note

   A newsroom and production word: stories, segments and projects get canned, usually by someone with authority over them. Frederick T. Smith's Backroom Briefings: John Curtin's War (1997) has a raider story "canned by the censor on instructions from the naval authorities." The passive with by, naming who killed the piece, is the natural construction. Unlike the "fired" meaning, it applies to the work, not to the people doing it.

6. 6
   adjectiveslang

   Drunk; intoxicated from drinking alcohol.

   He showed up to the meeting still canned from the night before.

   She was too canned to remember how she got home.

   Similardrunk, intoxicated, plastered, wasted

   Oppositesober

   Note

   Slang for drunkenness, at home among friends and out of place in anything formal. It sits after the verb: still canned, too canned to remember. That position is where it collides with the "fired" meaning. "He got canned at the party" can be read either way, so let the context make the drink plain.

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