impressed

1. 1
   adjective

   Feeling admiration or respect for someone or something that has affected you strongly, usually in a good way.

   The committee was clearly impressed with the candidate's research record.

   Visitors come away impressed by the sheer scale of the cathedral.

   Similarawed, amazed, dazzled, admiring

   Oppositeunimpressed, disappointed

   Note

   A gradable adjective, so it takes degree words freely: very impressed, more impressed, most impressed. The thing admired is introduced by with or by, as in impressed with the cleanliness of the hotel. After was or seemed it can be hard to tell apart from the passive of the verb. A degree word such as very or deeply marks it as the adjective.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of impress.

   The young pianist impressed the judges with her flawless performance.

   His honesty impressed me far more than his résumé did.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs. It is the simple past in she impressed them and the participle in she has impressed them. The verb also works without an object, so the newcomer impressed on her first day is complete as it stands. The stamping verb supplies a craft use as well: the seal was impressed into the wax.

3. 3
   adjective

   Marked or shaped by being stamped or pressed into a surface under pressure.

   The binder admired the impressed lettering along the spine of the volume.

   An impressed pattern ran around the rim of the freshly thrown bowl.

   Similarimprinted, tooled

   Oppositeraised

   Note

   Here the pressure is literal, and it is the image the admiring sense leans on. The verb impress covers both stamping a mark into a surface and fixing something deeply in the mind. Before a noun it names the result of the stamp, as in an impressed seal or impressed decoration, and it describes the object marked rather than anyone's feelings.

4. 4
   adjective

   Forced into service in a military or naval force, especially against one's own will.

   The impressed crew resented every officer who had dragged them aboard.

   Coastal villages dreaded the press-gangs that left families with impressed sons.

   Similarpressed, drafted

   Oppositevoluntary

   Note

   Seizure of people, the twin of seizure of goods: both describe something taken into service by force or authority, one a sailor or soldier, the other a cart or herd. Before a noun, as in impressed men, it can collide with the admiring adjective. A setting of compulsion rather than approval decides which is meant.

5. 5
   adjective

   Taken or seized by force or under official authority.

   The quartermaster loaded grain from the impressed carts onto the supply train.

   Villagers demanded payment for the impressed livestock the soldiers had driven off.

   Similarappropriated

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