suspended

suspended, pendent, pendulous can mean hanging from or remaining in place as if hanging from a support.

Suspended may imply attachment from a point or points above so that a thing swings freely or is held steady in its proper place or position

{

suspended from his neck was a medallion— R. H. Brown

}

{

chimes are a set of metal tubes suspended from a frame and struck by wooden mallets— McConathy et al

}

{

a suspended ceiling

}

or it may suggest a being poised or a being upheld (as by buoyancy)

{

they neither float nor fly, they are suspended— Jefferies

}

{

water free from suspended silt

}

Pendent usually describes something which hangs downward from a support or from one point of attachment; it seldom carries any further implication and so is applicable both to what is motionless and to what swings or moves or is in danger of falling

{

a trailing creeper with curving leaf and twining tendril, and pendent bud and blossom— Hudson

}

{

the smokehouse, its sooty rafters jeweled with fat hams like eardrops and pendent strips of cured middling meat— Cobb

}

Pendulous adds to pendent the specific implication of swaying or swinging, sometimes carrying a suggestion of actual floating in space

{

a pendulous nest

}

{

breasts . . . grown flabby and pendulous with many children— Buck

}

{

steep cliffs . . . hung with pendulous vines, swinging blossoms in the air— Melville

}

{

so blend the turrets and shadows there that all seems pendulous in air— Poe

}