clocked

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of clock.

   The radar clocked the pitch at ninety-eight miles per hour.

   Visitors clocked nearly ten miles walking around the old city.

   Note

   One spelling does both jobs here. It serves as the simple past (the radar clocked the pitch) and as the participle after have or be (the pitch was clocked at ninety-eight). The same form carries the verb's informal turns as well: noticing, recognizing, or identifying someone as gay or trans. In slang it can also mean hitting someone heavily. Only context tells you whether someone clocked was timed, spotted or struck.

2. 2
   adjective

   Driven by a regular, repeating timing signal that sets the rate of operation.

   Each clocked stage updates its state on the rising edge of the signal.

   The team built a clocked pipeline that processes one instruction per cycle.

   Similarsynchronous

   Oppositeasynchronous

   Note

   Engineers use it attributively, directly before the part of the circuit: a clocked stage, clocked logic, a clocked pipeline. The point is that nothing changes between pulses. State updates only on the edge of the signal, so its frequency sets the pace of the whole design. When a rate follows (clocked at a given frequency), the adjective shades into the speed-measuring verb.

3. 3
   adjectivecolloquialUK

   Of a motor vehicle: having had its odometer wound back to display a lower mileage than the vehicle has actually traveled.

   The dealer was fined for selling a clocked motor with a wound-back odometer.

   Service records exposed the hatchback as clocked, showing far higher mileage than the dial.

   Note

   A British used-car word that is also an accusation. Calling a car clocked says someone has tampered with its odometer to deceive a buyer. It is colloquial UK speech; in formal or American writing, say the odometer was rolled back. Keep it apart from the plain past tense: a car that clocked many miles simply traveled them, while a clocked car is hiding them.

4. 4
   adjective

   Embroidered with clocks: ornamental figured motifs, typically worked up the side or ankle of a stocking or sock rather than any depiction of timepieces.

   Her clocked silk stockings drew admiring glances at the ball.

   The tailor offered clocked hose with delicate embroidery along each seam.

   Similarembroidered

   Oppositeplain

   Note

   This is clothing vocabulary with a long pedigree. In Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748), a gentleman in borrowed dress is warned that, with his laced clothes covered, only his clocked stockings might give him away. The ornament was distinctive enough to identify its wearer. The word has nothing to do with timekeeping, and it pairs naturally with stockings, socks and hose, the garments the decoration was worked on.

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