FreeScrabbleDictionary

sudden

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
8
Words With Friends
10
Letters
6
Pronunciation
/ˈsʌd.ən/
See all 2 pronunciations
/ˈsʌd.ən/ · [ˈsʌd.n̩]

Definition of sudden

5 senses · 3 parts of speech · etymology included

adj

  1. Occurring quickly with little or no warning or expectation; instantly.
    “The sudden drop in temperature left everyone cold and confused.”
    “From lightninges and tempeſtes, from plage, peſtilence, and famine, from battayle and murther, and from ſodayn death. / Good lord deliver us.”
    “I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.”
See all 5 definitions

adj

  1. Occurring quickly with little or no warning or expectation; instantly.
    “The sudden drop in temperature left everyone cold and confused.”
    “From lightninges and tempeſtes, from plage, peſtilence, and famine, from battayle and murther, and from ſodayn death. / Good lord deliver us.”
    “I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.”
  2. (obsolete)Hastily prepared or employed; quick; rapid.
    “Never was such a sudden scholar made.”
    “Thus these pious flourishes and colours, examined thoroughly, are like the apples of Asphaltis, appearing goodly to the sudden eye; but look well upon them, or at least but touch them, and they turn into cinders.”
    “And if along with these should come ⁠The man I held as half-divine; ⁠Should strike a sudden hand in mine, And ask a thousand things of home; […] I should not feel it to be strange.”
  3. (obsolete)Hasty; violent; rash; precipitate.
    “I have no joy of this contract to-night: / It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;”

adv

  1. (poetic)Suddenly.
    “Herbs of every leaf that sudden flowered.”

noun

  1. (obsolete)An unexpected occurrence; a surprise.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

From Middle English sodeyn, sodain, from Anglo-Norman sodein, from Old French sodain, subdain (“immediate, sudden”), from Vulgar Latin *subitānus (“sudden”), from Latin subitāneus (“sudden”), from subitus (“sudden", literally, "that which…

See full etymology

From Middle English sodeyn, sodain, from Anglo-Norman sodein, from Old French sodain, subdain (“immediate, sudden”), from Vulgar Latin *subitānus (“sudden”), from Latin subitāneus (“sudden”), from subitus (“sudden", literally, "that which has come stealthily”), originally the past participle of subīre (“to come or go stealthily”), from sub (“under”) + īre (“go”). Doublet of subitaneous. Displaced native Old English fǣrlīċ.

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