Showing results for "devised"

• past participle of devise.
• past tense form of devise.

devised

American  

[dih-vahyzd] / dɪˈvaɪzd /

adjective

1. contrived, planned, invented, or designed.

   It’s a dark comedy about a couple of guys who embark on a poorly devised scheme to blackmail a local clergyman.

2. Theater. (of a play) having a script produced collaboratively by the performers rather than by a writer or playwright.

   Previous works of the Holwell Youth Troupe include a chilling ghost story and a devised piece on the topic of love.

3. Law. (of property) assigned or transmitted by will.

   When specifically devised property is no longer in the testator's estate, the beneficiary's gift fails.

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verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of devise.

Other Word Forms

• self-devised
  adjective
• undevised
  adjective
• well-devised
  adjective

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Etymology

Origin of devised

devise ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. )

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

devised

Elements Gehry devised to set it apart are already visible, as construction on the $337-million addition to the Colburn School of Performing Arts reveals details the architect conceived years ago.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026

Locked in a cat-and-mouse struggle, biology professor Timothy Paustian devised novel ways to catch students turning in chatbot-generated assignments.

From Barron's ● Oct. 6, 2026

He devised policy recommendations “for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction” as a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, his LinkedIn profile says.

From Salon ● Sep. 16, 2026

To bridge that gap, the sport's governing body has devised a new competition.

From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2026

In this they are quite unlike testimonies, which degrade as they pass from ear to ear in an endless game of Chinese whispers; eighteenth-century probability theorists actually devised formulae for calculating this rate of degradation.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

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