estimated

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of estimate.

   The committee estimated the project's total budget before approving it.

   Damage from the flood was estimated at several million dollars.

   Note

   One spelling does two verb jobs. It is the simple past (she estimated the cost) and also the participle behind perfect and passive forms (has estimated, was estimated). The passive with at is the usual way figures are reported: estimated at several million. Placed before a noun, the participle hardens into the adjective for approximate figures. Estimate itself once served as an adjective with that same meaning, a use now obsolete and rare.

2. 2
   adjective

   Reached through rough calculation or judgment rather than precise measurement; approximate.

   The estimated travel time assumed light traffic the whole way.

   Her estimated net worth appeared in several financial magazines.

   Similarapproximate, rough, projected

   Oppositeexact, precise, actual

   Note

   Its most characteristic job is to hedge a number: an estimated fifty to ninety million, an estimated three thousand. Notice the article. A singular an sits before a plural count because it attaches to the whole estimated quantity, not to the noun that follows. Edwin Black's Internal Combustion (2006) uses it this way for the deforestation of "an estimated fifty to…". Elsewhere it simply qualifies a noun, as in estimated cost or estimated time.

   The storm displaced an estimated twelve thousand residents.

   An estimated forty percent of the harvest was lost to frost.

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