sodden

adj

1. Soaked or drenched with liquid; soggy, saturated.

   “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.”

   “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)https://web.archive.org/web/20150212214621/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/pilgrim-roads/salopek-text 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.””

   “In 2004, after heavy rain fell on sodden ground, floods put the line out of action from February until May.”

2. (archaic)Boiled.

   “The thirde [drynke] is of that kinde of hony named Pechmes, whiche is made of newe wine sodden, vntill the third parte be boyled awaye […]”

   “[…] howe Almidor the blacke King of Moroco was sodden to death in a cauldrone of boyling leade and brimstone.”

3. (figuratively)Drunk; stupid as a result of drunkenness.

   “1595, George Peele, The Old Wives’ Tale, The Malone Society Reprints, 1908, line 560, You whoreson sodden headed sheepes-face […]”

   “[…] thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows […]”

   “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.”

   “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).”

4. (figuratively)Dull, expressionless (of a person’s appearance).

   “Remoue and march, soft and faire Gentlemen, soft and faire: double your files, as you were, faces about. Now you with the sodden face, keepe in there […]”

   “1795, Samuel Jackson Pratt, Gleanings through Wales, Holland and Westphalia, London: T.N. Longman and L.B. Seeley, Letter 49, pp. 444-445, Of the music-girls, many are pretty featured, but carry in every lineament, the signs of their lamentable vocation: sodden complexions, feebly glossed over by artificial daubings of the worst colour […]”

verb

1. (transitive)To drench, soak or saturate.

   “1862, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret She had cooked for him a mutton-chop, which was soddening itself between two plates upon the little table near the fire.”

   “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.