English

Adjective

sodden ‎(comparative more sodden, superlative most sodden)

1. Soaked or drenched with liquid; soggy, saturated.
   • 1810, James Millar (editor), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Volume XII, 4th Edition, page 702,

     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.

   • 1895 February, James Rodway, Nature's Triumph, The Popular Science Monthly, page 460,

     The outfalls are choked, the dams are perforated by crabs or broken down by floods, and soon the ground becomes more and more sodden.

   • 2014, Paul Salopek, Blessed. Cursed. Claimed., National Geographic (December 2014)

     A miraculous desert rain. We slog, dripping, into As Safi, Jordan. We drive the sodden mules through wet streets. To the town’s only landmark. To the “Museum at the Lowest Place on Earth.”

2. (figuratively) Drunk; stupid as a result of drunkenness.
   • 1857, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, 1899, Reprint Edition, page 60,

     With this profession of faith, the doctor, who was an old jail-bird, and was more sodden than usual, and had the additional and unusual stimulus of money in his pocket, returned to his associate and chum in hoarseness, puffiness, redfacedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy.

   • 2010, Peter Hitchens, The Cameron Delusion, page 79,

     I would have done too, but alcohol makes me so ill that I couldn't (I mention this to make it clear that I don't claim any moral superiority over my more sodden colleagues).

Translations

Derived terms

• soddenly
• soddenness

Verb

sodden ‎(third-person singular simple present soddens, present participle soddening, simple past and past participle soddened)

1. (transitive) To drench, soak or saturate.
   • 1898, J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet Chapter 4

     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. (intransitive) To become soaked.

Translations