connected

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of connect.

   The technician connected the new router in just a few minutes.

   Volunteers have connected hundreds of families with local food programs.

   Note

   Connect is a regular verb, so one spelling serves both the simple past and the participle: she connected the cables, and the cables have been connected. Because the verb can also be intransitive, the past can stand without an object. A punch that connected is one that landed. After be, the form may be a passive or one of the adjectives, as in a well-connected family.

2. 2
   adjective

   Linked to other people, places, or devices, or able to provide such links, especially through networking technology or a transportation system.

   Once the laptop is connected to the office network, the shared drives appear automatically.

   High-speed rail has made the region one of the most connected in the country.

   Similarlinked, networked, online, wired

   Oppositedisconnected, offline, isolated, unconnected

   Note

   The networked sense is a favorite of book titles and policy language: connected viewing, connected government, and Gurminder K. Bhambra's Connected Sociologies (2014). Placed before a noun, it often means "built around networks" rather than literally plugged in. After a verb it turns literal and takes to: a device is connected to a network, and a region is connected by rail.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having relationships with other people and involved in their lives; socially engaged rather than isolated.

   Volunteering keeps many retirees connected to their neighborhoods.

   Even after moving abroad, he stayed connected to old friends through letters and visits home.

   Similarengaged, involved, integrated, attached, close

   Oppositeisolated, disconnected, detached, alienated

   Note

   Older uses lean toward family and kinship. Henry Fothergill Chorley in 1838 describes a Northumberland family "not remotely connected with nobility," and Syed Ameer Ali's 1880 law of inheritance divides property among claimants "connected through" mother or father. The preposition carries the sense: connected with names the family, and connected through names the line. Emmanuel Gobillot's The Connected Leader (2007) shows the modern social use placed before a noun.

4. 4
   adjective

   Joined by bonds of affection; intimate and emotionally close to another person.

   Years of shared hardship left the brothers profoundly connected.

   She felt connected to her grandmother in a way distance could never weaken.

   Similarclose, bonded, attached, intimate, united

   Oppositeestranged, distant, detached, alienated

   Note

   Gradable and often intensified: friends become "very connected to each other emotionally." The feeling can extend to a place ("very connected to this place") and even to a conversation, as in Jennifer Kolari's Connected Parenting (2009). The usual construction is connected to. This is the vocabulary of parenting and relationship books, and it names felt closeness rather than the family-tie sense of blood or marriage.

5. 5
   adjective

   Enjoying favorable rapport with powerful or influential people or institutions, and able to call on that access.

   A connected lobbyist can secure a meeting that others wait months for.

   The firm hired her precisely because she was connected in regulatory circles.

   Similarinfluential, well-placed, networked, plugged-in

   Oppositeunconnected, obscure, isolated

   Note

   Rarely used bare: this sense usually travels with well-, as in Miss Read's Affairs at Thrush Green (2002), where a shy man with very little money "is very well-connected." Her line shows that access, not wealth, is the point. An adverb can name the arena, and the phrase can stand for a group: James Ronald Kennedy writes of "the politically well connected," open and unhyphenated.

6. 6
   adjectiveCanadaUS

   Associated with an organized crime family without being a formal member; treated as a trusted friend by full members.

   The contractor was connected, which explained why his bids never faced real competition.

   Detectives flagged him as connected after he was photographed dining with two crew bosses.

   Note

   North American usage draws a precise line here. A connected man is a "friend" of the made guys, trusted and useful but not inducted, and the "not yet" matters. Compounds can name the sphere, as in the mob-connected families of Nick Apuzzo's Connected (2010). Out of context the word can sound like the influence sense, so the setting has to make clear whether it means friends in high places or friends in the mob.

7. 7
   adjective

   Having a path, either directed or undirected, between every pair of vertices in a graph.

   A spanning tree exists only if the underlying graph is connected.

   Adding one more edge finally made the whole network connected.

   Oppositedisconnected

   Note

   A graph theorist's term, and for directed graphs it splits in two. Strongly connected requires a directed path in both directions between every pair of vertices. Weakly connected asks only that the graph be connected once the arrows are ignored. The adjective also builds longer technical names, such as connected dominating set, a subject of combinatorial study since the 1970s.

8. 8
   adjective

   Incapable of being partitioned into two nonempty open sets; forming a single unbroken whole.

   The interval from zero to one is connected, while the set of rational numbers is not.

   Removing one point from a circle leaves it connected, but removing two points does not.

   Oppositedisconnected

   Note

   A topologist's word, said of a whole space. There is an equivalent test that is often easier to run: the only subsets that are both open and closed are the empty set and the space itself. The interval from zero to one passes this test. The rationals fail it, falling apart at every gap. The graph-theory sense asks about paths between points rather than about open sets.

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