tented

1. 1
   adjective

   Covered with tents, as when a field or open ground is set up with many tents for camping or an event.

   Pilgrims spread across the tented meadow below the shrine.

   From the ridge they looked down on the tented encampment of the army.

   Note

   Most at home before a noun: a tented area, a tented meadow, a tented encampment. It suits temporary event grounds as well as campsites. Planning Pride '85 in Gay Community News, Marsha Levine promised a tented area for first aid and child care. It can also be graded, as more tented or most tented. Keep it distinct from the past-tense verb, as in a dish tented with foil.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of tent.

   The scouts tented beside the lake before the storm rolled in.

   They had tented on that ridge many times over the years.

   Note

   One regular form does double duty: they tented by the lake, and they had tented there before. Camping with tents takes no object, so it never turns passive. The kitchen and fumigation uses do take one: a roast tented with foil, a house tented to be fumigated. An archaic Scottish and British dialect verb tent, meaning "to heed" or "to guard," spells its past tense the same way.

   The roast was tented with foil to keep it from splattering.

   The whole house was tented before it was fumigated.

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