sudden
/ˈsʌd.ən/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.40 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adv
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: sodeyn
Usage
Inflected Forms
suddener (comparative)
suddenest (superlative)
more sudden (comparative)
most sudden (superlative)
suddens (plural)