tensioned

1. 1
   adjective

   Held in a state of tension; strained or pulled tight.

   Like a tightrope stretched taut between two posts.

   Engineers inspected each tensioned cable along the suspension bridge.

   The tensioned membrane kept its shape even in strong winds.

   Similartaut, tight

   Oppositeslack, loose

   Note

   An adjective of stored strain, and it reaches beyond cables and membranes. Martin Krieger, writing in Gay Community News in 1982, calls a fixed sense of identity "a tensioned coil likely to snap back". The image is of pull held in check and ready to release. Because it describes a degree of strain, it is gradable: something can be more tensioned or most tensioned.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of tension.

   The crew tensioned the cables once the towers were in place.

   He tensioned each spoke to true the bicycle wheel.

   Note

   A regular past form that serves every tense: the crew tensioned the cables, the cables were tensioned, they have been tensioned. The verb stays on the physical side of tension, meaning strain put on a cable, spoke or rope, not the nervous or suspenseful kind. It shares its spelling with the adjective "strained". An object or a by-phrase marks the verb, while more or most marks the adjective.

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