0 past simple and past participle of christen
1 to give a baby a name at a Christian ceremony and make him or her a member of the Christian Church:
She's being christened in June.
[ + noun ] She was christened Maria.
We christened him "Slowcoach" because he took so long to do anything.
2 to use something for the first time:
This perspective has been christened with various terms, denoting specific aspects of each composer's practice.
He adapted his new technology to all refuse and christened his invention a 'destructor'.
The acting enzyme was christened indophenol oxidase (vital indophenolsynthese).
Christened 'fullerenes', the new forms of carbon hold potential as both highly efficient structural materials, and as electric superconductors.
And some service stations started to sell other goods besides car spares - a practice that a contemporary journalist christened 'monkey wrench merchandising'.
We christened the first week of the survey ' the blitz ', during which we stormed through the sites obtaining preliminary information on the status of all the cases in the sample.
It was christened by economists some 50 years ago as "oligopoly"; that is, a mixture both of competition and of monopoly.
That may not be the normal period of gestation, but the fact is that the child was born, and was christened here in this document.