ringed

1. 1
   adjective

   Bearing markings in the shape of rings, circles, or loops.

   The ringed plover is named for the dark band across its breast.

   Astronomers can spot the ringed planets through even a modest telescope.

   Similarbanded, annulated

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of ring.

   Protesters ringed the courthouse for hours.

   Snow-capped peaks ringed the valley on every side.

   Note

   The regular past form of the encircling verb, which keeps it apart from the bell-sounding ring and its rang and rung. Crowds ringed the square; they never rang it. The same form covers fitting something with a ring for identification and girdling a tree by cutting away a circle of bark to kill it. It also covers stealing cars and changing their identity so they can be resold.

3. 3
   adjectivearchaic

   Wearing a wedding ring, and therefore lawfully married.

   In the old ballad, the ringed maiden mourns a husband lost at sea.

   I was born of a true man and a ring'd wife, and I can't argue upon it; but I and my old woman 'ud burn upon it, that would we.

   1875, Alfred Tennyson, Queen Mary: A Drama

   Note

   A period word that belongs to historical or poetic writing. Tennyson uses it in Queen Mary: A Drama (1875) in a blunt, dialect-flavored speech: "born of a true man and a ring'd wife," where the ring vouches for a lawful birth. Here the token stands for the whole married state. Outside verse or deliberate period pastiche, married or wedded says the same thing without sounding affected.

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