processed

1. 1
   adjective

   Altered through industrial manufacture, such as refining or food processing.

   Nutritionists recommend cutting back on processed snacks high in salt and sugar.

   Heavily processed oils lose many of the nutrients found in the raw seeds.

   Similarrefined, manufactured, treated, packaged

   Oppositeunprocessed, raw, natural, whole

   Note

   The factory-and-kitchen adjective is gradable: food can be more processed, or the most processed thing on the shelf, and adverbs such as heavily sit naturally in front of it. George Carlin's Brain Droppings (1997) turns the word back toward its verb. He stopped eating processed foods once he pictured the people processing them, a reminder that behind every processed product someone did the processing.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having completed a required procedure or set of steps.

   Each processed claim moves automatically to the payment queue.

   The order remained on hold until the payment was processed.

   Similarhandled, completed

   Oppositeunprocessed, pending, outstanding

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of process.

   The mill processed thousands of tons of grain last season.

   Her visa application was processed within a single week.

   Note

   A regular form, process plus -ed, serves both the simple past (the mill processed grain) and the participle after have or be. Nearly every meaning of process takes an object, so the passive is common: the film was processed, the data were processed. Walking in a procession is the exception, because it takes no object: the choir processed down the aisle. Before a noun, the participle settles into the manufactured-goods adjective.

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