geared

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of gear.

   The store geared its whole display toward holiday shoppers.

   Their support program was geared toward newly arrived families.

   Note

   One spelling serves both past forms: they geared the shop for winter, the shop has been geared for winter. The passive is where it does most of its work, as in a program geared to or toward a particular audience. That is gear's meaning of designing something to suit a purpose. The same form also reports the mechanical, harnessing and borrowing-to-invest verbs. Unlike the adjective for things with gears, it reports an action rather than describing a thing.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Equipped with one or more gears of a particular kind or number.

   Most modern bicycles are geared, letting riders adjust their effort on hills.

   The mechanism is intricately geared with brass cogs of varying sizes.

   Note

   As a descriptive adjective it often appears in combination, with a word in front naming the kind or the number of gears. Such compounds are hyphenated before a noun. It is not comparable: a machine is geared or it is not, so it is not "more geared" than another. To say how many gears or what kind, use the compound or a phrase. Do not intensify the adjective itself.

3. 3
   adjective

   Linked to a motor by gearing, so the motor's rotation drives it.

   The drum is geared to the motor, turning whenever the engine runs.

   Factory rollers are geared to a central motor for synchronized speed.

   Similarlinked, connected

   Oppositeuncoupled, disengaged

   Note

   Here the word names a link rather than a feature. A part is geared to the motor that drives it, and the preposition to carries the connection. That sets it apart from the "fitted with gears" meaning, which needs no partner. It can also be confused with the verb's past forms in phrases like "geared to a purpose". The mechanical reading always names a motor or engine at the other end.

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