gekeken

Gekeken is the past participle of the Dutch verb kijken, meaning to look or to watch. It is used to form compound tenses, most often with the auxiliary hebben, as in ik heb gekeken, jij hebt gekeken, hij heeft gekeken. The simple past tense is keek, but gekeken appears in perfect tenses to indicate a completed act of looking or watching.

In common usage, gekeken appears in phrases with the preposition naar, meaning to look at or to watch something. For example, ik heb naar de film gekeken (I have watched the film), wij hebben naar de demonstratie gekeken (we watched the demonstration). The construction kan also appear with other objects or clauses, such as toen ik binnenkwam, heb ik naar haar gekeken (when I arrived, I looked at her).

Gekeken is distinct from bekeken, the past participle of bekijken, which means to view or to inspect something more thoroughly. While gekeken focuses on the act of looking or watching, bekeken often conveys the idea of examining or reviewing something. For example, de documenten zijn bekeken means the documents were examined, whereas ik heb naar de documenten gekeken means I looked at the documents.

In summary, gekeken is the standard past participle for kijken when forming perfect tenses or describing a completed act of looking or watching, typically used with naar or other prepositional phrases.