sudden

comparative suddener · superlative suddenest

1. Occurring quickly with little or no warning or expectation; instantly.

   The sudden drop in temperature left everyone cold and confused.

   2 more examples

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

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

   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.

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

   Synonyms: abrupt

2. obsoleteHastily prepared or employed; quick; rapid.

   Never was such a sudden scholar made.

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1649, John Milton, Eikonoklastes

   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.

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

3. obsoleteHasty; violent; rash; precipitate.

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

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

   Synonyms: hotheaded

comparative more sudden · superlative most sudden

1. poeticSuddenly.

   Herbs of every leaf that sudden flowered.

   1667, John Milton, “Book VII”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC

plural suddens

1. obsoleteAn unexpected occurrence; a surprise.