Tasered

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Subjected to a nonlethal electrical discharge from a conducted energy device designed to temporarily immobilize a person
2. Struck with a stun gun that delivers high-voltage electrical pulses to disrupt muscle function
3. Hit with a Taser device that uses electrical current to disable someone temporarily

Etymology: The verb "tasered" is simply the past tense and past participle of "taser," so its story is really the story of that root. The name began as an acronym drawn from fiction. In the early 1970s, the inventor Jack Cover gave his device the working name TSER, short for "Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle," the title of a juvenile science fiction novel from the early twentieth century in the Tom Swift series. He later added an "A" to make the name easier to say, producing "Taser." The trademark then became so widely used for any stun gun that it passed into ordinary speech as a common word. That shift is called genericization: a brand name loses its status as a proprietor's mark and comes to name the whole category of object. Speakers now say "taser" for a stun gun of any make, and "tasered" follows the regular pattern for English verbs ending in a sound that takes "-ed."

Synonyms: stun, shock, zap