figured

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of figure.

   The detective figured the suspect had already slipped out of town.

   Her name figured prominently in the committee's final report.

   Note

   The past form keeps every meaning of the verb, and those meanings divide by region. Calculating and working something out are marked as American. Supposing (I figured she'd come) and being part of something (her name figured in the report) are not. A handy construction is had him figured for a lawyer, meaning judged him to be one. The same spelling also serves the wood-grain adjective and the "decorated" adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having a pattern considered attractive that appears across a section of the surface or grain.

   Like marble, whose natural veining makes each slab look unique.

   The luthier selected a slab of figured maple for the violin's back.

   Heavily figured walnut commands high prices among furniture makers.

   Similarpatterned

   Oppositeplain

   Note

   A word for natural materials, above all wood, where the pattern grows in the material rather than being put there. It is a term of praise: figured wood is sought after for its distinctive texture, and the degree can be graded, as in heavily figured walnut. Contrast the "decorated" sense, where a maker works figures onto cloth or mosaic. Figured maple owes its pattern to the tree.

3. 3
   adjective

   Decorated or adorned with one or more figures or designs.

   Like a tapestry whose surface is worked all over with woven scenes.

   The ballroom walls were draped in figured velvet for the occasion.

   Figured satin lined the inside of the jewelry box.

   Similarpatterned, decorated

   Oppositeplain

   Note

   Two worlds use it differently. In dress and textiles it simply means patterned: Stanley Weyman's Chippinge Borough (1906) puts a young man in a figured muslin cravat. In writing about art it marks the presence of figures, with non-figured as its opposite. Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity (2009) describes mosaics altered to replace figured by non-figured designs. Whether the subject is cloth or imagery tells you which reading applies.

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