carpentered

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of carpenter.

   The cabin was carpentered from local pine over a single summer.

   She carpentered the entire staircase without any help.

   Note

   The verb behind it works both ways. Carpenter can take an object (she carpentered the staircase), or it can stand alone for working at the trade (he carpentered for a living). Only the transitive use yields passives such as a cabin carpentered from pine, and that participle leads directly to the adjective for carpenter-built things.

2. 2
   adjective

   Built by a carpenter.

   The carpentered staircase still showed the marks of hand tools.

   Antique dealers prize carpentered pieces over factory-made ones.

   Similarhandcrafted, handmade

3. 3
   adjective

   Characterized by right angles and by edges that run vertically and horizontally.

   Researchers contrast carpentered environments with the rounded forms of open landscapes.

   The carpentered geometry of the apartment block left no curve anywhere.

   Similarrectilinear, angular

   Oppositecurvilinear, rounded

   Note

   A term from the psychology of perception for surroundings full of rectangles, straight lines and regular corners. Its usual partner is environment, and it grades freely: people from more carpentered settings have been argued to be more susceptible to certain visual illusions. Writers often put it in scare quotes, a sign that the stretch from the literal "built by a carpenter" is still felt.

4. 4
   adjective

   Created or built with a deliberate, formal structure.

   Critics praised the novel's tightly carpentered structure.

   The screenplay was carefully carpentered so that every scene paid off.

   Similarcrafted, constructed, structured

   Note

   Here the joinery is figurative: the word describes things assembled by design rather than grown. Robert G. Collins finds E.J. Pratt's Towards the Last Spike more carpentered than the earlier narratives. Selwyn D. Ryan stretches it to a whole society, setting carpentered Trinidad against sedimented Jamaica, which contrasts joined by design with laid down over time. It usually appears in the comparative, more carpentered.

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