acted

Acted is the simple past tense and past participle of the verb act. It covers both performing an action and behaving in a certain way. In performance contexts, acted indicates that someone has portrayed a role or participated in a production: “She acted in several plays” or “The actor acted convincingly.” In general action contexts, it signals that an action was taken in response to a situation: “They acted quickly after the warning.” In formal or legal language, acted can appear in phrases such as “acted on instructions” or “acted under authority.”

Grammatically, acted is a regular verb form: the present tense is act, the past tense and past participle are acted. It forms the present perfect with have/has (I have acted) and the past perfect with had (They had acted). It can be used in passive constructions (“was acted upon”) but is more commonly found in active voice. Acted is related to acting (the present participle and the noun form) and is distinct from the noun actor, which refers to a person who acts.

Etymology and origin: the verb act derives from the Latin agere (to do, perform), with the noun act tracing back to Latin actus and Old French acte. The sense of performing or carrying out an action developed in English during the medieval period, with the past forms using the regular -ed conjugation. Today, acted remains a common grammatical form across contexts ranging from everyday actions to theatrical and formal proceedings.