targeted

1. 1
   adjective

   Directed at a specific person, group, or objective rather than spread broadly.

   The agency launched a targeted advertising campaign for first-time homebuyers.

   A more targeted treatment reduced side effects by sparing healthy cells.

   Similarfocused, specific, tailored

   Oppositeuntargeted, broad, general, indiscriminate

   Note

   Precision is the point of this sense, and it can be graded. One plan can be more targeted than another, and a team can choose the most targeted approach on offer. It pairs naturally with nouns for deliberate effort, such as interventions, searches, treatments and campaigns. James Lambert, writing in 2014 on Hobson-Jobson, describes his data as gathered through targeted searches of historical texts.

2. 2
   adjective

   Selected as the object at which something, such as an attack or campaign, is aimed.

   The most heavily targeted regions received emergency supplies first.

   Several targeted species are now protected under the revised conservation law.

   Note

   Here the word describes whatever is on the receiving end: the targeted bases, the targeted airfield. Before a noun it can be misread, because the "focused" meaning sits in the same slot. A targeted region was aimed at, while a targeted campaign does the aiming. To tell them apart, ask whether the noun is the mark or the method.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of target.

   The campaign targeted swing voters in three key states.

   Investigators believe the thieves targeted homes left empty during the holidays.

   Note

   One spelling does both past jobs: the campaign targeted voters, and voters were targeted by it. The t stays single, giving targeted rather than targetted. The verb reaches beyond weapons and audiences into the programmer's sense of producing code for something, so a compiler can have targeted a particular chip. In the passive it shades easily into the adjective for what is aimed at, as in the targeted homes.

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