suspected

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of suspect.

   Investigators suspected foul play long before the lab results came back.

   He was suspected of cheating, though no one could prove it.

   Note

   One regular -ed form does two jobs. It is the simple past in "they suspected foul play" and the participle after have or be in "they had suspected it" or "he was suspected". When it means believing someone guilty, the passive usually takes of plus a noun or gerund, as in "suspected of cheating". Older texts can mislead, because an obsolete use of suspect meant "to look up to, to respect."

2. 2
   adjective

   Believed, but not proven, to be the cause of something or to be responsible for a fault.

   Engineers traced the fire to a suspected fault in the wiring.

   Doctors isolated the patient with a suspected infection until the tests confirmed it.

   Similarpresumed, possible, probable, alleged, supposed

   Oppositeconfirmed, proven

   Note

   Placed before a noun, it works as a provisional label: a suspected vandal, a suspected fault, a suspected infection. It does not grade. Nothing is "more suspected" or "very suspected", because the suspicion either attaches or it does not. It overlaps with the passive participle: "the suspected vandal" and "the vandal who was suspected" say much the same thing, but the adjective folds the doubt into the noun phrase itself.

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