relieved

1. 1
   adjective

   Feeling or showing relief after a worry, fear, or discomfort has gone away.

   Everyone looked relieved once the storm passed without causing any damage.

   The relieved parents hugged their child the moment she stepped off the bus.

   Similarthankful, comforted, grateful

   Oppositeworried, anxious, tense

   Note

   The feeling word, and it grades like any true adjective: more relieved, most relieved, very or extremely relieved. That grading is the quickest way to tell it from the past form of relieve. In she was very relieved, the word describes how she felt. In the pain was relieved by rest, it describes something done to the pain, and very has no place there.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of relieve.

   Backup officers relieved the night patrol just before sunrise.

   The new treatment relieved much of her chronic pain.

   Note

   Here the word is the verb at work. Relieve is regular, so one spelling serves as the past tense (the medicine relieved her) and as the participle after have or be (her pain has been relieved). The verb behind it covers mental distress, physical pain and help for people in need, and it once meant simply "to lift up," a sense now obsolete.

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