canned

• IPA^(key): /kænd/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ænd

canned (not comparable)

1. Preserved in cans.

   canned tomatoes

2. (by extension) Previously prepared; not fresh or new; standardized, mass-produced, or lacking originality or customization.

   The form letter included a canned answer stating that what I asked was against policy.

   • 1998, Dr. Dobb's Journal: Software Tools for the Professional Programmer:

     Unfortunately, some of the canned code, which Visual C++ gives to you when creating an application, is not CE aware and gives you compile errors.

   • 2005, James Howard Kunstler, chapter 7, in The Long Emergency, page 279:

     The vested owners of all those sun-drenched tract houses may stick around for a while and fight over the region, perhaps thinking that they are reenacting the great historical dramas of the nineteenth century—such is the long-term effect of canned entertainment on the collective imagi­nation.

   • 2016 February 7, Michael Barbaro, “Once Impervious, Marco Rubio Is Diminished by a Caustic Chris Christie”, in The New York Times‎:

     Throughout the evening, Mr. Christie’s admonition about canned lines and rehearsed speeches hovered and seemed to recalibrate how the crowd — and television viewers — processed what Mr. Rubio said (and resaid, over and over).

3. (slang) Drunk.
4. Terminated, fired from a job.

• (preserved in cans): tinned
• (prepared or standard): boilerplate, stock
• (drunk): See Thesaurus:drunk

• (antonym(s) of “preserved in cans”): dried

canned

1. simple past and past participle of can

• dancen, nanced