gated

1. 1
   adjective

   Enclosed or secured by a gate or similar means of restricting who can enter.

   The community is gated, and visitors must sign in before driving through.

   A gated entrance kept the public well away from the private estate.

   Similarenclosed, fenced, walled, guarded, secured

   Oppositeopen, ungated

   Note

   Restriction is the point, not the hardware. The word stretches from a gated community to gated check-ins in source control, where code must clear a checkpoint before it is accepted. Trains Illustrated (1960) already sets gated level crossings against ungated ones. The Economist (2013) strings it with gilded and gaudy, so that the gate signals exclusion and display as much as security.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of gate.

   Engineers gated the water supply while they repaired the main line.

   The new feature was gated behind a subscription for several months.

   Note

   A regular past form: gate simply adds -d, so one spelling serves the simple past, the past participle, and the adjectives that share it. Every sense of the verb takes an object, so the passive comes easily: a teenager is gated as punishment, a feature is gated behind a subscription. After a form of be, check whether gated reports an action or describes having a gate or restricted access.

3. 3
   adjective

   Able to be switched on and off, normally by means of a control signal.

   Like a door that swings open only when someone gives the right signal.

   The amplifier uses a gated circuit that opens only when the input passes a set threshold.

   Each channel is gated so that background hiss is muted between notes.

   Oppositeungated

4. 4
   adjective

   In heraldry, describing a charge such as a castle or tower whose gate is shown in a specified tincture.

   The blazon described a castle argent gated gules, its red gateway set against the white walls.

   Each tower on the arms was gated sable, the dark gates standing out clearly.

   Oppositeungated

   Note

   Blazon has a fixed order. The building and its own tincture come first, then the word, then the gate's tincture: "a castle argent, gated and windowed gules" in Thomas Innes of Learney's Scots Heraldry (1956). It often pairs with windowed, and the two share the single tincture named at the end. Its counterpart, ungated, belongs to the same descriptive vocabulary.

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