Hcfyk

In English we say things like:

• a cal­i­brated de­vice


• a dis­trib­uted prod­uct


• a founded com­pany


• a de­stroyed house

Those ‑ed words there all sig­nify that some verb (here re­spec­tively cal­i­brate, dis­tribute, found, or de­stroy) has been “done onto”
the noun that fol­lows it. What is the term for this gram­mat­i­cal de­vice? Or, what is a sin­gle term for some­thing hav­ing been done unto X as a
char­ac­ter­is­tic of that X?

As­sum­ing that we’re talk­ing only about words that de­rive from verbs and used with nouns
here like my ex­am­ples all do, can that gram­mat­i­cal term you’ve cho­sen
also be ap­plied to any sorts of words that do not end in ‑ed,
and are there any sorts of words that do end in ‑ed which this
gram­mat­i­cal term would not ap­ply equally to?

They are called the Past Participle.
They can either be formed by adding the suffix ed

or be an irregular such as: eat-> eaten -> fight -> fought (not to be confused with The Past Simple which is simply the verb of past simple tenses clauses.

They can be many things in English.

just to name a few:

• an adjective


• the perfect module verbs


• passive voice

In English, a verb that is used as an adjective to describe a noun is called a participle. See UhtredRagnarsson's answer.

A participle is a word formed from a verb, usually by adding -d, -ed, or -ing.

There are two kinds of participle in English, as follows:

The present participle

[...]

The past participle

Participles are used [...] as adjectives.

[see article for other uses]

There is, however, a different term used to describe verbs when the action of the verb is performed on/to/at/etc. something. That term is transitive verb.

transitive verb is one that is used with an object: a noun, phrase, or pronoun that refers to the person or thing that is affected by the action of the verb. In the following sentences, admire, maintain, face, and love are transitive verbs:

I admire your courage.

We need to maintain product quality.

I couldn’t face him today.

She loves animals.

The -ed in all of your examples is a past-participle suffix. A past participle is not a derived form: rather, it is an inflected form of a verb (assuming you accept the distinction between derivation and inflection as grammatical processes in English). Most past participles end in -ed, but some end in -⁠(e)n instead (like beaten) and some don't end in either -ed or -(e)n (like stood or hurt). The past participle can have a passive meaning, so it can also be called a "passive participle". In the context of English, "past participle" and "passive participle" refer to the same verb form.

But not all words ending in -ed are verb forms. Words belonging to other parts of speech can be derived from past participles. I think the most common type of derivation is past participle → adjective. Since verbs and adjectives are distinct parts of speech, it's best not to refer to such adjectives as "participles": instead, they can be called departicipial adjectives (a synonymous term is "participial adjectives"), which lets us reserve the term participle for the inflected form of the verb. That said, it's not always possible to figure out whether a word is a participle or a departicipial adjective.

Here are some common texts for finding out whether a word is an adjective or a verb:

• Can it be preceded by very? If so, it's an adjective. This test doesn't give positive results for me for any of your phrases. (But note that this test only works one way: it can't tell you that a word isn't an adjective. There are some adjectives that can't be preceded by very.)




• Can it be preceded by carefully? If so, it's a verb. For me, this test indicates that the -ed words in all of your examples could be verbs.




• Can you add the prefix un- (with the sense of "not", not with a sense of reversal)? If so, it's probably an adjective. For me, this test indicates that calibrated at least can be an adjective (since we certainly can say "an uncalibrated device"). The situation is less clear for distributed, destroyed and founded. There are dictionary entries for undistributed and undestroyed, but "an undistributed product" and "an undestroyed house" both sound a bit weird to me. Unfounded clearly exists as the negation of a different sense of the word founded, but *"an unfounded com­pany" doesn't seem acceptable to me.

There are other possible tests, but I can't describe all of them. Some sources suggest that word order might be relevant, but I believe this is a mistaken view, so I haven't included this as a test.

I think I've made it clear from what I've said above that there are many words ending in -ed that are not past participles/passive participles. (Most obviously, many past-tense verb forms end in -ed, but they are definitely not participles.)

I don't think the tense of the verb is the point of your question. I suppose a simple answer is they are "actions" as verbs, but thank you for the additional input in the comments. More specifically, they are "objective actions", or you might possibly consider "operative actions" as well (because they are exerting force or influence on something).

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/objective

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/operative