highlighted

Highlighted is the past participle and past tense form of the verb highlight. It functions as an adjective or as a verb, used to indicate that something has been made more noticeable or given special attention. When used as an adjective, highlighted describes items that have been marked, emphasized, or set apart, such as highlighted notes in a document or highlighted terms in a glossary.

The verb highlight means to draw attention to something by marking, coloring, underlining, or otherwise making it stand out. The term is widely used across domains such as writing, education, design, and computing. The etymology traces to the literal combination of high and light, with the sense of bringing light to a feature so that it becomes more visible. In time the compound formed a standard verb and then the past participle form highlighted.

In editing and publishing, highlighted passages are often shown with a background color or other typographic emphasis to indicate importance or to guide reader attention. In digital environments, highlighting commonly refers to text selection or to syntax highlighting in code editors, where keywords are colored to aid reading. Highlighted data points in charts and tables indicate values that warrant focus.

Because color alone can be inaccessible to some users, best practices encourage pairing color changes with other cues such as bold type, icons, or descriptive labels. See also highlight, highlighting, highlighter.