sensed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of sense.

   He sensed a shift in the room's mood before anyone spoke.

   The system had sensed the leak hours before the alarm went off.

   Note

   A regular -ed form doing double duty: it stands alone as the simple past (she sensed trouble) and follows have or be in perfect and passive clauses (the danger was sensed too late). What it takes as an object spans the verb's whole range, from a sound or smell to a mood, a threat, or a meaning grasped. Keep it apart from the compound adjective in five-sensed, which describes a creature's equipment, not an act of perceiving.

2. 2
   adjectivein compounds

   Having the number or type of senses indicated by the word combined with it.

   Philosophers once debated whether some creatures might be more than five-sensed.

   The sharp-sensed fox detected the intruder long before the dogs did.

   Note

   Here the word works only as the second half of a compound: five-sensed, sharp-sensed. A number or a describing word goes in front, joined by a hyphen, and the whole compound acts as an adjective (five-sensed beings). It cannot be graded, because nothing is more five-sensed than another. On its own, sensed reverts to the past participle and means perceived.

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