Etymologically
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laden

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈleɪdən/, /ˈleɪdn̩/[1]

Etymology

The adjective is the original strong past participle of the verb lade, which is inherited from Middle English laden, inherited from Old English hladan (“to load, heap up; to draw water”) (past participle gehladen),[2][3][4][5] inherited from Proto-Germanic *hlaþaną.[2][6] Its cognates include hlada, hladan, laden, laden and hlaða (“to load”).[3][7][5][8] Hoad and Partridge relate it to a Slavic verb meaning "to lay, place",[7][9] and Etymonline gives the Indo-European root as Proto-Indo-European *klā- (“to spread out”).[2] The verb laden "to load", recorded from 1514, was formed again from lade with the suffix -en, perhaps partly as a Scots variant of a verb formed on load.[3][5][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Loaded, weighed down: the mid-13th century in Etymonline,[2] and before the 12th century in Merriam-Webster.[10] The Middle English Dictionary records laden of ships, vehicles and trees loaded with men, goods or fruit.[4] The OED's first quotation for the adjective is from about 1595, in Thomas Maynarde's account of Drake's voyage.[3]

Semantic evolution

The figurative sense, burdened with age, sorrow and the like, is found by about 1400.[2] As the verb lade gave way to load, its past participle laden survived as the usual form of the loading sense,[5][11] and in the senses "to load with gifts or fruit" and "to burden with sorrow or sin" it is now the only form of the verb in use.[3] It is often joined to a noun, as in sorrow-laden and heavy-laden.[3] Etymonline calls the form ladened erroneous,[2] though Merriam-Webster records it for the verb.[10] In Scots laden was also a noun, a load or burden.[12]

Timeline

  • Old English – hladan, to load; to draw water.[3]
  • mid-13th century – adjective, loaded, weighted down.[2]
  • c. 1400 – figuratively, burdened.[2]
  • 1514 – verb laden, to load.[3]
  • c. 1595 – the OED's first quotation for the adjective.[3]

Modern meaning

Adjective

  1. Carrying a heavy load; heavily loaded: The tourists came back laden with bags.
  2. Burdened or weighed down, as with care or guilt.
  3. Full of, or heavily charged with, something; often in compounds: a fat-laden diet, a debt-laden company.

Verb

  1. (rare) To lade or load.

Word family

  • unladen
  • ladle
  • larboard
  • load
  • lading
  • last

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  5. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  9. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  10. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  12. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)