Sodden
adj, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 To drench, soak or saturate. transitive
"But as I lay asleep the top had been pressed off the box, and the tinder got loose in my pocket; and though I picked the tinder out easily enough, and got it in the box again, yet the salt damps of the place had soddened it in the night, and spark by spark fell idle from the flint."
- 2 To become soaked. intransitive
- 1 Soaked or drenched with liquid; soggy, saturated.
"It is found, indeed, that meat, roaſted by a fire of peat or turf, is more ſodden than when coal is employed for that purpoſe."
- 2 Boiled. archaic
"The thirde [drynke] is of that kinde of hony named Pechmes, whiche is made of newe wine sodden, vntill the third parte be boyled awaye […]"
- 3 Drunk; stupid as a result of drunkenness. figuratively
"1595, George Peele, The Old Wives’ Tale, The Malone Society Reprints, 1908, line 560, You whoreson sodden headed sheepes-face […]"
- 4 Dull, expressionless (of a person’s appearance). figuratively
"Remoue and march, soft and faire Gentlemen, soft and faire: double your files, as you were, faces about. Now you with the sodden face, keepe in there […]"
- 1 wet through and through; thoroughly wet wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"The football field was absolutely sodden."
Etymology
From Middle English sodden, soden, from Old English soden, ġesoden, from Proto-Germanic *sudanaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *seuþaną (“to seethe; boil”). Cognate with West Frisian sean, Dutch gezoden (“seethed, boiled”) (related to Dutch zode (“swampy land”)), Low German saden, söddt, German gesotten, Swedish sjuden, Icelandic soðinn. More at seethe.
More for "sodden"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.