dieted

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of diet.

   He dieted strictly for three months last year.

   She had dieted for weeks before the doctor's visit.

   Note

   One spelling serves as both past tense and past participle, and the verb behind it runs in two directions. Used intransitively, "she dieted" means she controlled her own eating. The dated transitive use puts someone else in charge: the patient was dieted on milk. An obsolete sense, to feed, explains the "well-fed" adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Describing a person or animal that has been kept on a specialized eating plan limiting calorie intake.

   The dieted contestants weighed in noticeably lighter at the finale.

   Researchers compared dieted mice with those fed freely.

   Note

   A regime word: it names what has been done to someone's eating, not how they look. Ben Jonson's The Magnetic Lady (1641) sets a fat, unwieldy fellow against "a dieted Spark, fit for the combat," which suggests someone lean and in fighting trim. Medical writing of 1881 speaks of dieted diabetics, and the adjective is gradable: "the most dieted of dowagers." For the visible result, use the "looks thin" sense.

3. 3
   adjective

   Showing the visible effects of reduced calorie intake, such as a leaner appearance.

   His dieted physique drew comments at the reunion.

   She had a noticeably dieted figure by spring.

   Similarlean, slim, trim

   Oppositeplump, flabby

   Note

   Here the word describes a body rather than a regime: a dieted back, a dieted slenderness. Fiction of the 1930s and '40s uses it pointedly, for thinness that has been worked for. Olga Rosmanith sets "a dieted slenderness" against "the natural delicacy of youth." It often carries that faint judgment, so it fits best when the contrast with natural leanness is the point.

4. 4
   adjective

   Providing specialized dietary services, especially where attention to a patient's nutrition forms part of treatment.

   As a dieted institution, the sanatorium prepared every patient's meals according to the physicians' orders.

   The army turned the field station into a dieted hospital, with its own kitchen serving meals the medical officers prescribed.

   Note

   A word from hospital administration. The British Medical Journal of 1885 reports that the field hospital at Korti "was made a dieted one," with sanctioned diets named low, milk, chicken, roast and entire. Such an institution serves meals to medical order and, as The Army in India and Its Evolution (1924) puts it, is "otherwise self-contained." The word describes the institution, never the patient.

5. 5
   adjectivefiguratively

   Cut down or reduced from a fuller form; abbreviated.

   The committee approved a dieted budget for the coming year.

   He published a dieted edition of the lengthy novel.

   Similarabridged, reduced, trimmed, condensed

   Oppositeunabridged

   Note

   The slimming image is carried over to texts and spaces: a dieted version, a dieted paper, a dieted volume, even "the dieted homes" of the Furniture Record in 1931. The word suggests trimming something down while keeping it intact. In plain prose, abridged or shortened is the safer choice. Dieted works when a playful echo of slimming is wanted.

6. 6
   adjectivefiguratively

   Brought about by scarcity or shortage; left lean as a result of having too little.

   The dieted harvest left the village with meager stores.

   Decades of conflict produced a dieted, struggling region.

   Similarmeager, lean, scanty, impoverished

   Oppositeabundant, bountiful, plentiful

   Note

   Scarcity becomes an appetite in this sense, and the nouns it modifies are things that can hunger: a palate, a demand. Thomas Cooper De Leon's Belles, Beaux and Brains of the 60's (1909) has a novelty tickle "the dieted palate of Richmond's exclusiveness," and The Textile Worker (1932) writes of "a dieted demand" waiting for goods. It works best on a noun that can be starved and then fed.

7. 7
   adjective

   Well fed, or having or needing more nutrition than usual.

   The dieted horses, given oats twice a day, were sleek and full of energy.

   Bentgrass is a dieted turf, and greenskeepers must fertilize it regularly to keep it thick.

   Similarwell-fed, nourished

   Oppositeunderfed, starved

   Note

   Here dieting runs the other way, toward abundance. It belongs to the stable and the turf: a dieted gelding is one fed up for hard riding, and William Tucker in Golfers Magazine (1918) calls a demanding turf "a dieted grass." Samuel Rutherford stretches it into a sermon image, "a dieted horse for heaven." Behind it stands the old meaning of the verb, to feed. Only context separates it from the slimming senses.

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