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In most dictionaries "labeled" or "labelled" isn't recognized as an adjective but there are a few who do deem it to be an adjective. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/labeled Is this correct? Or is "labeled" merely the past tense of "label"?

Any input is as always greatly appreciated!

evertgoran
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  • Does this answer your question? verb or adjective in "The blue page is stapled to the red page"? 'A labelled jar' and "he labelled the jar' would seem to be very different usages. – Edwin Ashworth May 13 '20 at 16:18
  • I've just found a site licensing 'most labelled'! I'm not so sure, but certainly, with 'decorated', 'She was the most decorated officer in the Navy' seems quite acceptable. I think Quirk et al's arguments for gradience are powerful. – Edwin Ashworth May 13 '20 at 16:35
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    In many cases the past tense of a verb an function as if it were an adjective. There is probably a name for such a usage, but I'm lousy with names. – Hot Licks May 13 '20 at 16:47
  • @EdwinAshworth I can clearly see the difference, but why aren't the majority of dictionaries making that distinction? – evertgoran May 13 '20 at 17:55
  • @HotLicks Yes, I'm aware, I was just confused by not being able to find it defined as an adjective in any of the dictionaries. – evertgoran May 13 '20 at 17:57
  • I suspect that some term such as "adjectival verb" is used for this form of the verb. – Hot Licks May 13 '20 at 18:18
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    As has been said many times on ELU before (though one or two people who are in awe of OED disagree), dictionaries are not wonderful on deciding POSs correctly. And in some cases, even prestigious grammars (and hence grammarians) disagree, so how can dictionaries be expected to get everything right? Is there always a 'right'? – Edwin Ashworth May 13 '20 at 18:41
  • In English, where just about any word can be used as just about any part of speech, there usually isn't a right, and in fact asking about parts of speech is just about the most useless (and therefore popular!) possible classroom activity. When you finish the class, you will never have to decide on parts of speech again, because nobody ever cares and knowing them never helps you to speak or read better. – John Lawler May 13 '20 at 18:45

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