trusted

1. 1
   adjective

   Regarded as reliable or dependable, and therefore relied upon with confidence.

   The company relies on a few trusted suppliers for its parts.

   He became a trusted advisor to the president over the years.

   Similarreliable, dependable, valued, faithful, loyal

   Oppositeunreliable, untrustworthy

   Note

   Once it describes a quality rather than an act, the word grades like any adjective, taking more and most. Norm Macdonald's 2013 joke on Norm Macdonald Live turns on exactly that scale, setting America's most trusted news anchor against its least trusted. It usually sits before its noun (a trusted source), where it no longer asks, as the past form of trust does, who did the trusting.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of trust.

   He trusted the doctor's advice completely.

   Voters trusted the new mayor to keep her promises.

   Note

   A regular form, so the past tense and the participle share one spelling: she trusted, she had trusted and she was trusted all look alike. The constructions vary instead. You trusted in friends, trusted that help would come, trusted him with the keys, or trusted the keys to him. Placed before a noun, the participle shades into the adjective meaning 'reliable'.

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