Used to express a completed action that took place before another specific past action occurred.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Outside the capital's national police facility known as Zone 7, family members had chained themselves to prison gates, while some had spent weeks sleeping in tents.
From Barron's ● Mar. 8, 2026
Pet owners arrived at the Brentwood dog park one October morning to find that federal police had chained the gate shut.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2024
I'd been interviewing protesters who had chained themselves to pumping equipment at a pipeline being built in northern Minnesota by a Canadian company.
From Salon ● May 22, 2022
German news agency dpa quoted regional police on Wednesday confirming that a woman and a man had chained or glued themselves to a facility in Schwedt, northeast of Berlin.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 27, 2022
There was the beast that he had chained, pining, dying.
From Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac by Ernest Thompson Seton
