paced

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of pace.

   Anxious relatives paced the hospital corridor through the night.

   The runner paced herself carefully over the final miles.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs: the simple past (they paced the corridor) and the participle after have or be (she had paced herself well). The verb behind it covers a lot of ground: walking back and forth, setting the speed in a race, measuring a distance by steps. The reflexive paced herself belongs to the racing meaning. It says she rationed her effort, not that she walked up and down.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having a specified rate of movement, rhythm, or progression.

   The novel is briskly paced, moving from one crisis to the next.

   Critics praised the film as tightly paced and free of dead scenes.

   Note

   An adjective that rarely stands alone: it needs a word saying what kind of pace, as in briskly paced, tightly paced, slow-paced or fast-paced. Compounds take a hyphen before a noun (a fast-paced thriller), while -ly adverbs stay open (a briskly paced novel). It grew out of the past participle but names a quality rather than an action.

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