sudden
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈsʌdn̩/
ipa: [ˈsʌdn̩]
rhymes: -ʌdən
Forms: form: suddener
form: suddenest
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.
Senses: examples: text: The sudden drop in temperature left everyone cold and confused.
text: From lightninges and tempeſtes, from plage, peſtilence, and famine, from battayle and murther, and from ſodayn death. / Good lord deliver us.
ref: 1552, The Boke of Common Prayer [etc.], The Letanie:
text: 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.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
glosses: Occurring quickly with little or no warning or expectation; instantly.
examples: text: Never was such a sudden scholar made.
ref: c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Henry V, act 1, scene 1:
text: 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.
ref: 1649, John Milton, Eikonoklastes:
text: 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.
ref: 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XIV”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 22:
glosses: Hastily prepared or employed; quick; rapid.
examples: text: I have no joy of this contract to-night: / It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
ref: c. 1591–1595, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 2:
glosses: Hasty; violent; rash; precipitate.
Synonyms: sense: happening quickly
word: abrupt
word: precipitous
word: subitaneous
sense: hasty, rash
word: hotheaded
word: impetuous
word: impulsive
word: reckless
word: precipitant
word: precipitate
word: spontaneous
word: sudden
word: suddent
Hypernyms: word: instantaneous
Derived terms: all of a sudden
all on a sudden
all the sudden
a quick drop and a sudden stop
a short drop and a sudden stop
sudden arrhythmic death syndrome
sudden death
sudden death syndrome
sudden fiction
sudden infant death syndrome
suddenly
suddenness
sudden oak death
sudden sniffing death syndrome
sudden stratospheric warming
suddenty
sudden unexpected death syndrome
sudden unexplained death syndrome
sudden unexplained nocturnal death syndrome
sudden victory
suddenwoven
Yunnan sudden death syndrome
Related terms: word: summary
word: unceremonious
word: immediately
word: speedy