1676 H. More Remarks 2 Disc. 141 In his supposed tensed and rarefied bodies.

1676 H. More Remarks 2 Disc. 156 The contraction or restitution of the tensed matter.

1911 J. London Adventure i. 11 The tensed body relaxed.

1934 E. O'Neill Days without End i. 29 His eyes fixed before him.., his body tensed defensively.

1952 G. Thomas Now lead us Home 191 All tensed up in wait for the hand that will draw some heavenly melody out of them.

1971 S. Hill Strange Meeting i. 41 There would be no more anxieties..about how he could bear to sit in the sour-smelling room with the Major, tensed with dread of the night to come.

1980 ‘R. B. Dominic’ Attending Physician xxii. 198 Ben sounds pretty tensed-up to me.

1972 Language 48 314 The situation of [examples] 34 and 35 is particularly interesting: we do not, in general, find this type of stress in tensed (i.e. non~infinitival) relative clauses.

1978 Language 54 289 It is also common to most of these proposals to assume that deverbatives are derived from clauses which contain tensed verb forms or their equivalents.

1982 Baker & Hacker in Language & Communication II. iii. 240 Animals have immediate purposes and intentions, but long term goals, projects and intentions are available only to creatures who have forms of expression for such things, viz. a tensed language.