chased

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of chase.

   The reporters chased the senator down the corridor for a comment.

   As children, we chased fireflies until well after dark.

   Note

   Chase is regular, so one form does both jobs: they chased the bus is simple past, while she has chased it and the bus was chased use the participle after have or be. The passive is where it shades into the "pursued" adjective. The verb also covers less obvious pursuits, from a ship hunting a vessel to a shot of whiskey chased with beer.

2. 2
   adjective

   Followed by someone or something trying to catch up or capture.

   The chased fox doubled back repeatedly to throw off the hounds.

   Exhausted, the chased suspect collapsed just short of the fence.

   Similarhunted

   Note

   It usually sits before its noun: the chased vessel, the chased player, the currently chased caribou. It often appears beside its active twin, as when a chasing ship plots the quickest course to meet the chased one. Next to words for cups, panels or metal, readers will take it as the metalworker's sense instead, so a chased goblet is decorated, not pursued.

3. 3
   adjective

   Decorated with a design that has been embossed or engraved, especially on metal.

   The museum displayed a chased gold cup from the seventeenth century.

   Each chased panel on the casket showed a different hunting scene.

   Similarengraved, embossed, tooled

   Note

   A craftsman's word: chasing hammers or punches a design into the surface from the front. Specialists keep it distinct from its neighbors. H. Cole's Catalogue of the Objects of Indian Art lists "chased and engraved work, and the repoussé work" as separate kinds, with repoussé raised from the back. The term reaches beyond metal, too: Rodwell and Neal's The Cosmatesque Mosaics of Westminster Abbey (2019) describes chased lozenges set in marble.

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