zoned

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of zone.

   Officials zoned the waterfront for industrial use last year.

   The neighborhood was zoned for single-family houses.

   Note

   One spelling serves two quite different verbs. In planning language it is transitive and often passive: land is zoned for housing, with be or have as the auxiliary. The slang verb of drifting into a daydream is intransitive, so it cannot be passive. You say he zoned during the lecture, or he had zoned, and from there the participle settles into the drug-dazed adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Belonging to or contained within a designated zone.

   Every zoned lot in the district must follow strict height limits.

   The surveyor flagged each zoned plot along the river.

   Similardesignated

   Note

   A classifying adjective: a piece of land either falls inside a zone or it does not, which is why its opposite is built with non-, as in non-zoned land. It usually sits before the noun it sorts, as in a zoned lot. It differs from the planning verb's participle in what it points to. No act of zoning is in view, only the status that results.

3. 3
   adjectiveslang

   Intoxicated by drugs to the point of feeling dazed and mentally disconnected.

   By midnight half the crowd was zoned and slumped against the walls.

   He sat there zoned, staring blankly at the flickering screen.

   Similarstoned, dazed, high, wasted

   Oppositesober, alert, lucid

   Note

   Slang that means the same as the longer phrase zoned out: dazed, drugged, mentally elsewhere. It belongs to casual talk about parties and highs, not to writing that needs a measured tone. The planning sense shares the spelling, so a sentence like the whole block was zoned can tip either way. Context settles it, and so does the fuller zoned out.

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