mooned

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of moon.

   The teenagers mooned the rival team's bus as it pulled away.

   He mooned over her photograph for weeks after she left town.

   Note

   One spelling does double duty, as with any regular verb: they mooned the bus, and they have mooned the bus. The construction shows which meaning is meant. With a direct object it is the cheeky display, or the rarer exposing to moonlight or adorning with crescents, and only these meanings turn passive (the bus was mooned). Followed by over or after, it is the infatuated sense: she mooned over his letters.

2. 2
   adjectiveliterary

   Of, resembling, or symbolized by the moon.

   The mooned radiance of the lantern washed across the silent hall.

   The poet praised her mooned, silver beauty in every verse.

   Similarlunar

   Note

   A poet's adjective built straight from the noun, moon plus -ed, rather than from the verb. Milton uses it in Paradise Lost (1667), where the angelic squadron sharpens "in mooned horns": its ranks curve into the points of a crescent. It belongs to verse and elevated description, and it does not take degrees, so nothing is more mooned than something else. Outside poetry, readers will hear the past tense of moon.

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