emphasized

1. 1
   past formverb

   Simple past tense and past participle of emphasize.

   The report emphasized the risks of delaying treatment any further.

   Safety has been emphasized in every training session this year.

   Note

   One -ed spelling does three jobs: the simple past (the report emphasized the risks), the perfect after have (she has emphasized it twice), and the passive after be. Because emphasize is transitive and always takes something to stress, the passive comes easily, letting the stressed thing become the subject. Graded uses like more emphasized belong to the descriptive adjective.

2. 2
   highlightedadjective

   Given extra stress or focus, so that it stands out more than other things.

   The emphasized passages in the manuscript guided the editor's revisions.

   At her old school, test scores were far more emphasized than creative projects.

   Similarhighlighted, stressed

   Oppositeunderstated

   Note

   What sets the adjective apart from the past-tense verb is that it can be graded: something is more emphasized, most emphasized, or not very emphasized. Okyun Kwon's Buddhist and Protestant Korean Immigrants (2003) speaks of fraternal activities being "much more emphasized." A handy test: if very or more slots in naturally, the word is describing a state. If it reports someone's act of stressing, it is the verb.

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