introduced

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of introduce.

   The committee introduced new safety rules last spring.

   A new currency was introduced shortly after the war ended.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs: the simple past (they introduced the rule) and the past participle after have or in the passive (the rule was introduced). The passive suits the senses about things, such as a currency, a chemical added to a mixture, or a new practice, where who did the introducing matters less. The participle also settles into the biologist's adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Brought to a location from somewhere else, rather than occurring there naturally.

   The introduced beetle spread rapidly across the continent, displacing native insects.

   Conservationists worked for years to remove introduced predators from the island.

   Similarnon-native, alien, exotic, foreign

   Oppositenative, indigenous

   Note

   A biologist's term for where an organism came from, not how it behaves: the prickly pear in Australia is an introduced species whether it thrives there or not. Its natural opposite is native, and it does not take degrees, so nothing is "more introduced" than something else. The transport may be deliberate or accidental. Naturalized and invasive are the words for what an introduced species may become afterward.

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