Crossword clues for suddenness
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sudden \Sud"den\, a. [OE. sodian, sodein, OF. sodain, sudain, F. soudain, L. subitaneus, fr. subitus sudden, that has come unexpectedly, p. p. of subire to come on, to steal upon; sub under, secretly + ire to go. See Issue, and cf. Subitaneous.]
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Happening without previous notice or with very brief notice; coming unexpectedly, or without the common preparation; immediate; instant; speedy. ``O sudden wo!''
--Chaucer. ``For fear of sudden death.''
--Shak.Sudden fear troubleth thee.
--Job xxii. 10. -
Hastly prepared or employed; quick; rapid.
Never was such a sudden scholar made.
--Shak.The apples of Asphaltis, appearing goodly to the sudden eye.
--Milton. -
Hasty; violent; rash; precipitate. [Obs.]
--Shak.Syn: Unexpected; unusual; abrupt; unlooked-for. [1913 Webster] -- Sud"den*ly, adv. -- Sud"den*ness, n.
Wiktionary
n. The state of being sudden.
WordNet
n. the quality of happening with headlong haste or without warning [syn: abruptness, precipitateness, precipitance, precipitancy]
Usage examples of "suddenness".
A faint clarion call sounded and, with an appalling suddenness, horror and darkness engulfed him as he battled, weary in every fibre of his soul and body, against the endless waves of an unseen enemy that must inevitably triumph.
They could not get over their surprise at the suddenness of the change I had worked in the house.
The uncanny defamiliarization effected by the Court takes place immediately, with the directedness of Freudian condensation and poetic metonymy, with the suddenness of the Freudian joke.
He was smiling at this thought when, with a suddenness Gell could scarcely believe, the alleyway came alive.
Next, with equal suddenness I relapsed into an extraordinarily goodhumoured frame of mind, and walked across to Nicola.
Where the dilatation is of the saccular variety, it may come up in such quantities and with so much suddenness as to gush from the mouth.
One day, while walking along the cliffs, the solution came to me with the same characteristics of brevity, suddenness, and immediate certainty.
Peeling clear of the wood, curling tighter and tighter, and finally crumbling into small bits with what must have been malignly silent suddenness, the portrait of Joseph Curwen had resigned forever its staring surveillance of the youth it so strangely resembled, and now lay scattered on the floor as a thin coating of fine blue-grey dust.
With appalling suddenness the charge had turned into a shambles where armored figures died amid screaming mangled horses.
Profile had been right: whether or not the tank blast had killed the sniper, its suddenness had at least driven the Molt away from the narrow circuit of rocks through which he had intended to teleport and confuse counterfire.
Even Smith, accustomed to storm, was nonplussed at the suddenness of the attack upon him.
But immediately after seven, this clock sprung its alarm with the abruptness of an explosion, and within the second, Annixter had hurled the bed-clothes from him and flung himself up to a sitting posture on the edge of the bed, panting and gasping, blinking at the light, rubbing his head, dazed and bewildered, stupefied at the hideous suddenness with which he had been wrenched from his sleep.
The suddenness of their attack had caught Breimen almost totally unprepared, and now the battle-mad Rillyti had blasted entrance into the startled city.
Her parents, too, were stupified by the suddenness of the unexpected shock, and it was longer before their faculties recovered the tone proper to meet an insult so unprovoked and gross.
Mary waited in the middle of the track, her nerves ajingle with the suddenness of the approach, and presently the horse appeared out of the mist in front of her, a rider on his back, the pair of ghostly figures lacking reality in the dim light.