nailed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of nail.

   He nailed the last board down just before the storm hit.

   Every plank had been nailed securely by the end of the day.

   Note

   One spelling serves both the past tense and the participle, so the auxiliary does the work: she nailed it, it has been nailed down, he was nailed. The slang meanings use the same form: catching someone, exposing a sham, pulling off a task completely. In the passive the literal and the slang can look alike, so only context tells whether a board or a person was nailed.

2. 2
   adjective

   Fitted or studded with nails, often of a stated kind, as in brass-nailed.

   The climbers laced up their nailed boots before the steep ascent.

   A brass-nailed sea chest sat at the foot of the bunk.

   Similarstudded

   Note

   An adjective built on the noun rather than the verb. It means furnished with nails, not fastened by them, which keeps it apart from the past participle. It is happiest in hyphenated compounds whose first part names the kind, such as brass-nailed or red-nailed. The nails need not be metal: a red-nailed finger has painted fingernails. It is not comparable, so it takes no more or most.

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