hunted

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of hunt.

   Early settlers hunted deer to feed their families through the winter.

   The research team has hunted for the missing files across every server.

   Note

   Both forms come from plain -ed, because hunt is regular. Hunted therefore serves the simple past (they hunted deer) as well as the perfect and passive (has hunted, was hunted). The passive lies close to the adjective of pursuit: a hunted animal is one that has been hunted. Particles follow when the meaning is driving or chasing, as in hunted down and hunted away. Bell-ringers use it for a bell moved through a course of changes.

2. 2
   adjective

   Being the target of a hunt; actively pursued by hunters or other pursuers.

   The hunted animals fled deeper into the forest as the dogs closed in.

   Conservationists track hunted species to protect their dwindling numbers.

   Similarchased, stalked

   Note

   Ecology writing extends the word from the animal to the land. A hunted area is one where hunting goes on, set against unhunted sites. Penn and Mysterud's Evolutionary perspectives on environmental problems (2007) uses it this way, noting that macaques are scarcer in the hunted areas. So the word can describe the quarry, a whole species, or the ground itself. In that use, its natural opposite is unhunted.

3. 3
   adjectivefiguratively

   Nervous and agitated, with the strained look of someone being pursued.

   He wore a hunted expression, flinching at every knock on the door.

   Years of mounting debt gave her a hunted, restless air.

   Similarhaunted, harried, harassed, anxious, tormented

   Oppositerelaxed, calm, serene, composed

   Note

   The look of the quarry carries over to people whom no one is chasing at all: a hunted expression or a hunted air, worn by someone pressed by fear or worry rather than by hounds. Unlike the literal sense, it is a matter of degree, so more hunted and most hunted sit naturally here, and a face can grow more hunted by the day. It is most at home before look, expression and air.

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