moonlighted

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of moonlight.

   Before writing full-time, the novelist moonlighted as an advertising copywriter.

   Researchers found that the enzyme moonlighted as a structural protein inside the cell.

   Note

   One regular form does both jobs: she moonlighted as a bartender; he has moonlighted for years. The second role usually follows as. Biologists say a protein has moonlighted when it performs a second function quite unlike its main one; in dated British use, to have moonlighted was to have done paid work without declaring it.

2. 2
   adjective

   Lit by the light of the moon.

   From the porch they could see the moonlighted fields stretching to the tree line.

   A fox slipped across the moonlighted yard and vanished under the fence.

   Similarmoonlit

   Note

   Here the word is moon plus lighted, a past participle of light, so it shares only its spelling with the second-job verb, which is built on moonlight. In Bleak House (1852–53), Charles Dickens has a figure cross “the moonlighted window”, and Upton Sinclair's The Overman (1907) looks out on “the moonlighted grove”. It does not take more or most.

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