elected

Pluralelecteds

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of elect.

   Voters elected three new council members this year.

   He was elected president of the union after a close runoff.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. It is the past tense of a finished act (voters elected her), and it is the participle that builds the passive and the perfect (she was elected, they have elected). With a direct object it usually means choosing by vote. Followed by a to-infinitive it leaves politics behind: she elected to stay home simply means she chose to.

   She elected to stay home rather than travel with the team.

   The committee elected to postpone the decision until spring.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A person who has been chosen for an office or position through a vote.

   The newly elected took their seats in the assembly on Monday.

   City council members and other local electeds pushed back hard against the state budget cuts.

   Similarrepresentative

   Note

   A participle that has turned into a countable noun, so it takes a plural -s. Diane Cardwell, writing in the New York Times in 2008, ran "council people" and "borough presidents" up to "the citywide electeds." It is political shorthand for officeholders as a group. Do not confuse it with the elect, the theological word for those chosen for salvation.

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