cheeked

1. 1
   adjectivein compounds

   Having cheeks of a specified type, as indicated by an attached descriptive word.

   The chubby-cheeked baby was passed around the whole family.

   Her ruddy-cheeked grandfather still walked the hills every morning.

   Note

   A word that rarely stands alone. It is the second half of a hyphenated compound, and the first half does the describing: red-cheeked, apple-cheeked, hollow-cheeked. The compounds stretch beyond faces, as in Thomas Dekker's red-cheeked apples (1599), and they can carry a whole portrait, from Stevenson's healthy apple-cheeked schoolmaster to Oscar Wilde's warning of growing sallow and hollow-cheeked. Since the first element does the grading, the form itself is not compared.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of cheek.

   The apprentice cheeked his master once too often and was dismissed.

   He had cheeked the foreman before, but never so openly.

   Note

   The past form of a verb with three quite different jobs. In its impudent sense it takes a direct object: you cheek someone, as in cheeked the foreman. In handling a horse it means drawing the head back toward the saddle with the bridle's cheek strap, and it can also mean tucking something into one's cheek. Unlike the compound-forming adjective, it stands on its own and needs no hyphenated partner.

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