watched

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of watch.

   The detective watched the suspect from across the street.

   She has watched that documentary several times.

   Note

   A regular -ed form doing two jobs. Alone it is the simple past (we watched the game). After have or be it is the participle (has watched, was watched). Only the transitive meanings can turn passive: looking at, guarding, being wary of. The old vigil meaning, keeping awake beside the sick or dying, takes no object, so it stays in active sentences such as they watched all night.

2. 2
   adjective

   Kept under close and ongoing observation or surveillance.

   The newly watched border crossing saw a sharp drop in smuggling.

   Closely watched patients recover steadily under constant monitoring.

   Similarobserved, guarded, patrolled, supervised

   Oppositeunmonitored, unguarded, unsupervised, unattended

   Note

   Observation as a condition that changes what it observes. Fred Alan Wolf's The Spiritual Universe (1996) borrows the proverb a watched pot never boils for a quantum effect in which constant observation keeps a transition from happening. The word also turns technical. Constraint programmers speak of watched variables that a solver keeps checking, and psychology experiments compare watched groups with unwatched ones, its natural opposite.

3. 3
   adjective

   Wearing a watch; usually said of the wrist on which it is strapped.

   The lawyer tapped her watched wrist twice, a silent signal that the meeting had run long.

   A silver-watched wrist rested on the steering wheel, its dial catching the afternoon sun.

   Note

   A descriptive adjective that rarely leaves the wrist. Gail Sheehy's state policeman raises his "big silver-watched wrist" in 1969, and in Kathleen Alcott's Infinite Home (2015) the light catches a "gold-watched wrist." A metal or brand name often comes first, usually hyphenated. Keep wrist close by. Without it the reader hears the "monitored" meaning, and a watched guest sounds observed rather than adorned.

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