phased

1. 1
   adjective

   Arranged or carried out in separate stages over time, with each stage following the one before it.

   The city approved a phased redevelopment that would unfold over the next decade.

   Regulators favored a phased withdrawal of the subsidy rather than an abrupt cut.

   Similarstaged, gradual, incremental, stepwise

   Oppositeabrupt, sudden, immediate

   Note

   Here the participle has settled into an adjective that sits before nouns of process: a phased introduction, a phased withdrawal. It is not comparable, because a plan is either phased or it is not, and nothing is ever more phased. Unlike the verb's past form, it needs no in or out. A phased introduction is simply one that was phased in.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of phase.

   The government phased out the old currency by the end of the decade.

   Engineers phased the upgrade across several regions to limit downtime.

   Note

   Most often it comes paired with a particle: a program is phased in, an old currency is phased out. As a participle it follows have or be, as in 'the plan was phased out over a decade.' The same spelling also carries the geneticist's sense, where data are phased once their haplotypes are worked out, and the science-fiction sense of passing straight through a solid wall.

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