controlled

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of control.

   Engineers controlled the dam's water levels throughout the flood.

   For decades, a single family controlled the region's trade.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. It is the simple past in "they controlled the gates" and the participle after be or have in "the gates were controlled", and the final l doubles before -ed. The participle also carries the researcher's verb, to control for a variable, which is where the clinical-trial adjective comes from. The old bookkeeping use, checking one account against another, is now archaic.

2. 2
   adjective

   Subject to regulation, direction, or restraint by some authority or system.

   Prices for these medicines are strictly controlled by the government.

   The museum keeps its oldest manuscripts in a carefully controlled environment.

   Similarregulated, restricted

   Oppositeunregulated, uncontrolled, free

3. 3
   adjective

   Restrained or reserved in one's words and actions, holding back strong emotion.

   Even under fierce questioning, the witness remained controlled and composed.

   He gave a controlled reply, careful not to reveal how angry he was.

   Similarcomposed, restrained, calm, measured, collected

   Oppositeuncontrolled, emotional, agitated, excited

4. 4
   adjectivein compounds

   Owned, run, or directed by a particular named person, group, or organization.

   The newspaper is controlled by a single media family.

   Most of the country's oil fields are controlled by the state.

   Similarowned, run, operated, directed

   Note

   The combining form that names who holds the reins: British-controlled India, in Noel Pitts Gist and Roy Dean Wright's Marginality and Identity (1973). The controller comes first, joined by a hyphen when the compound stands before a noun: a state-controlled company. After the noun, the idea usually opens out into a phrase with by, as in "India was controlled by Britain", and the hyphen disappears.

5. 5
   adjective

   Designed with a comparison group, so results can be measured against samples that did not receive the treatment.

   A randomized controlled trial showed the vaccine cut infections by half.

   Researchers ran a controlled experiment to rule out other causes.

   Oppositeuncontrolled

   Note

   A research-methods term, not a description of restraint. The control is a comparison group that did not receive the treatment, and every result is judged against it. Its fixed setting is the randomized controlled trial, abbreviated RCT and sometimes written with a comma after randomized. A merely well-managed study is not controlled in this sense, whatever the "regulated" meaning might suggest. Without a comparison group, the word does not apply.

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