downed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of down.

   Anti-aircraft fire downed two enemy planes during the night raid.

   He downed the entire cup of coffee before rushing out the door.

   Note

   One regular -ed form does double duty. In "he downed an ale" it is the past tense, and in "the ball was downed at the six yard line" it is the passive participle. Every living use is transitive: something is felled, shot from the air, swallowed, defeated or put down. The intransitive meaning "descend" is obsolete, so the verb needs an object or a passive. Before a noun, the participle becomes the adjective for felled things.

2. 2
   adjective

   Brought down to the ground or out of the air, usually by force.

   Rescue teams searched the forest for the downed pilot.

   Hunters tracked the downed deer through the underbrush at dusk.

   Similarfallen

   Note

   An either-or adjective: a plane, a bird or a tree is downed or it is not, so it never takes more or most. It sits before its noun, as in the downed plane, the downed birds or a downed tree. Its natural settings are crashed aircraft, the hunter's quarry and fallen trees. After a form of be, the same idea reads as the verb: the tree was downed.

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