invented

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of invent.

   Edison invented several devices that changed everyday life.

   The new alphabet was invented by a single scholar in the ninth century.

   Note

   Invent is a regular verb, so one spelling does double duty. In Robert Frost's A Masque of Reason (1945), the Devil simply invented Hell in the simple past. Has invented builds the perfect, and was invented by builds the passive. Older writing hides a trap: an obsolete meaning of invent was "to come upon, to find," so something invented there may have been discovered rather than devised.

2. 2
   adjective

   Fictional or imaginary; created in the mind or in fiction rather than existing in reality.

   Like the lands on a fantasy map, detailed and convincing, yet existing only in someone's imagination.

   The novel takes place in an invented country with its own laws and customs.

   Critics dismissed the memoir's most dramatic scenes as invented.

   Similarfictional, imaginary, made-up, fabricated, fictitious

   Oppositereal, actual, true, factual

   Note

   The adjective carries the verb's sense of making something up for a purpose. That is why it often hints at deliberate deceit: an invented alibi is a lie built to be believed. It is gradable, so more invented and most invented are possible. Fictional simply names the realm of stories, while invented points to someone who did the making.

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