prescribed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of prescribe.

   The physician prescribed a full course of antibiotics for the infection.

   She faithfully followed the diet her nutritionist prescribed.

   Note

   One spelling does both jobs, as with any regular verb: she prescribed is the simple past, and it has been prescribed is the participle. The form carries every sense of the verb. A doctor prescribes a drug, a rulebook prescribes a ritual, and in law a claim can be said to have prescribed, meaning it has lapsed. That legal use takes no object, so it forms perfects with have but never a passive.

2. 2
   adjective

   Specified in great detail and established as following a strict, fixed set of rules or steps.

   Like a military drill in which every movement is laid out in advance and carried out exactly.

   Every recruit completed the prescribed sequence of drills before graduating.

   The audit had to follow the prescribed method, leaving no room for improvisation.

   Similarset, fixed, stipulated, specified, mandated

   Oppositeoptional, flexible, discretionary, improvised

   Note

   Where the past participle says only that someone laid a rule down, the adjective measures how tightly. It takes degree words: a very prescribed procedure, more prescribed, most prescribed. That grading is the easiest way to tell the two apart. It suits writing about procedures whose steps come in a fixed order, as in energy-monitoring work, where building shell parameters are adjusted first and HVAC efficiency after.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2