concerted

1. 1
   adjective

   Carried out jointly by people who have agreed to act together as a combined effort.

   Like an orchestra where every musician plays to the same beat.

   Health officials launched a concerted campaign to curb the outbreak.

   The rescue required a concerted response from several agencies.

   Similarjoint, coordinated, combined, collective, united

   Oppositeindividual, separate, uncoordinated, unilateral

   Note

   Its natural home is in front of a noun of action: effort above all, but also campaign or response. In use, the weight often falls on coordination and persistence rather than on several partners. Simon Shuster, writing in Time in 2022, calls months of Russian strikes on Ukraine's power grid a concerted effort. The word is gradable, so a campaign can become more concerted as it gathers force.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of concert.

   The two governments concerted their efforts to fight smuggling.

   Having concerted their strategy, the partners moved quickly.

   Note

   Behind this form stands the verb concert, meaning to plan or settle something by agreement, not the noun for a musical performance. The verb is transitive and takes an object: governments concert their efforts, partners concert a strategy, and the perfect is built with have. The same spelling also serves as the "done jointly" adjective, so read the sentence to see whether it is describing an action or a quality.

3. 3
   adjective

   Composed with separate, independent parts for voices and instruments.

   The composer scored a concerted motet for two choirs and a string ensemble.

   Baroque chapels favored concerted settings that played voices against instrumental groups.

   Note

   This is a musician's term, and it describes how a piece is scored rather than the jointly planned effort. In concerted music, the voices and the instruments each carry their own written parts. A concerted motet, for example, sets a choir against a string ensemble instead of letting the players merely accompany. Don't read it as "performed at a concert"; that idea belongs to the noun, not to this adjective.

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