-rigged
Britishadjective
Explanation
When something is rigged, it's fully equipped and ready to go. You'll usually find this adjective describing a sailboat or ship with masts and sails. A fully rigged boat has all the necessary ropes, sails, and masts that it needs to travel on the water. While this nautical adjective is narrowly focused on sailing vessels, you can also use rigged to mean "fraudulent" or "tampered with." If a politician talks about a rigged election, he is not-so-subtly accusing his opponent of conspiring to illegally manipulate the outcome of a vote. This meaning comes from a now-obsolete meaning of rig, "a trick."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Officers with climbing equipment moved in after several This Is Rigged protesters blocked the front gate and scaled oil tankers.
From BBC • Jul. 19, 2023
A savvy game designer should release: “Candyland Revenge: Rigged Edition.”
From Washington Post • Jan. 10, 2023
Rigged along each side of the ships, incandescent lamps attract giant squid near the surface, where they can be hauled from the ocean by long metal arms jutting over the water.
From The Guardian • Oct. 21, 2020
Black bass are good using a 1/8 copper shaky head, stick bait, crankbait off the west point, Carolina Rigged French Fry in 3 to 5 feet of water around rocks and boathouses.
From Washington Times • Mar. 11, 2020
Rigged up church again; little nearer in, and this afternoon three of us went and put everything geometrically straight—poles, pegs, ropes, etc.—to prevent second collapse.
From Woman's Endurance by Luckhoff, A. D (August D.)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
