visited

1. 1
   verb

   Past participle of visit.

   The remote village had rarely been visited by outsiders before the road was built.

   Researchers confirmed that the burial site had been visited centuries earlier.

   Note

   The form that carries the perfect and the passive: has visited, had been visited, was visited by. It is spelled the same as the simple past, so the auxiliary in front of it is what tells them apart. The passive also keeps older, darker uses of visit alive. In a town visited by plague or a family visited with misfortune, the visitor is a sickness or a punishment rather than a guest.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having received a visit or visits from people who come to see or stay at a place.

   A frequently visited website attracts steady traffic throughout the year.

   The well visited gardens drew tourists from across the region every spring.

   Note

   The participle has settled into an adjective, and unlike the verb form it can be graded: more visited, most visited, as in the most visited museum in the city. It usually travels with an adverb that measures the traffic, such as frequently, rarely, well or little. Before a noun such pairs are often hyphenated (a well-visited garden), a sign it has moved away from the verb form.

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