squared

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of square.

   She squared the photo frame against the edge of the wall.

   They squared their accounts at the end of the trading season.

   Note

   One spelling does both jobs, as it does for any regular verb: she squared the frame (simple past), and the accounts have been squared (participle). It carries every sense of the verb, from turning oars perpendicular to the water to reconciling a debt. As a participle it shades easily into an adjective. A number that has been squared becomes the "second power" adjective, as in the radius squared.

2. 2
   adjective

   Raised to the second power, meaning a quantity multiplied by itself.

   The area of a circle uses the radius squared in its formula.

   Velocity squared appears in the equation for kinetic energy.

   Note

   Unusually for an English adjective, it follows what it describes: the radius squared, velocity squared. That is how x² is read aloud. In a spoken formula it binds only to the quantity just before it, so "two r squared" squares the r, not the two. It takes no degrees, because a value either is squared or is not.

3. 3
   adjective

   Covered with a printed grid of equal squares.

   The architect roughed out the design on squared paper before drafting it properly.

   Each student received a sheet of squared paper for the geometry exercise.

   Similargridded

   Oppositeplain, blank

   Note

   A word of the schoolroom and the drafting table, heard almost always in one pairing: squared paper, the sheet children use to plot graphs. It describes the markings on the sheet, not the sheet's outline. It also does not take degrees. A sheet is squared or it is not, and nothing is ever more squared than another.

4. 4
   adjectivein compounds

   Of a game piece, located on or confined to squares of the specified color or type on the board.

   Trading off his light-squared bishop left weak squares around the king.

   A lone dark-squared bishop cannot defend the light-colored squares.

   Note

   A chess word that never stands alone. It completes a compound naming a color, as in light-squared bishop or dark-squared bishop, hyphenated before the noun. A bishop moves only along diagonals, so it keeps to one color for the whole game, and the label never changes. Players therefore speak of trading off the dark-squared bishop, or of the squares a lost bishop can no longer guard.

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