sudden

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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsʌdən/, [ˈsʌdn̩]

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌdən
• Hyphenation: sud‧den

sudden (comparative suddener, superlative suddenest)

1. Happening quickly and with little or no warning.

   The sudden drop in temperature left everyone cold and confused.

   • 1552, The Boke of Common Prayer [etc.]‎, The Letanie:

     From lightninges and tempeſtes, from plage, peſtilence, and famine, from battayle and murther, and from ſodayn death. / Good lord deliver us.

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     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.
   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, act 1, scene 1:

     Never was such a sudden scholar made.

   • 1649, John Milton, Eikonoklastes:

     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.

   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XIV, page 22:

     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.
   • c. 1591–1595, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 2:

     I have no joy of this contract to-night: / It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;

• (happening quickly): abrupt, precipitous, subitaneous; see also Thesaurus:sudden
• (hasty, rash): hotheaded, impetuous, impulsive; see also Thesaurus:reckless

• (antonym(s) of “happening quickly”): gradual; see also Thesaurus:gradual
• (antonym(s) of “all”): unsudden

sudden (comparative more sudden, superlative most sudden)

1. (poetic) Suddenly.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:

     Herbs of every leaf that sudden flowered.

sudden (plural suddens)

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

• all of a sudden
• all of the sudden
• of a sudden
• on a sudden
• upon a sudden

• “sudden”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “sudden”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “sudden”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

sudden

1. definite singular of sudd c
2. definite plural of sudd n