Word.ws English Dictionary

laden

/ˈleɪdən/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

colloquial/ˈleɪdn̩/

laden adjective: weighed down with a load, burdened. Also the past participle of lade.

Adjective

laden (comparative more laden, superlative most laden)

  1. Weighed down with a load, burdened.
    • The other men were variously burthened; some carrying picks and shovels—for that had been the very first necessary they brought ashore from the Hispaniola—others laden with pork, bread, and brandy for the midday meal.1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC
  2. Heavy.
    • His comments were laden with deeper meaning.
    • When applied to other persons, the idea of comfort is an intuitive measure of trustworthiness, reliability, and predictability in a polycentric world that managers often find troubling, ambiguous, and anxiety-laden.1988, Robert Jackall, “Chapter 1: Moral Probations, Old and New”, in Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers, Twentieth Anniversary edition, →ISBN, page 13
  3. Oppressed.
    • Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years. A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor;[…].1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans...
  4. In the form of an adsorbate or adduct.
    • Once laden it is easy to regenerate the adsorbent and retrieve the adsorbed species as a gas.

Verb

laden (third-person singular simple present ladens, present participle ladening, simple past and past participle ladened)

  1. (archaic, poetic) To load or charge.
    • The grass is smoothly cut; the trees are carefully pruned; the flowers, ladening the dreamy air with their perfume, are arranged in studied groups of exquisitely blended colors.1889, The Yale Literary Magazine, volume 54, number 8, page 357

Also used as

laden is also the past participle of lade.

Examples of laden in a sentence

  • It continues to be laden with intense debt servicing costs.
  • Much of the suffering experienced by disabled or dysmorphic people is socially determined and value laden.
  • Freize rode a strong cob and led a donkey laden with their belongings.

All 40 example sentences with laden

Forms of laden

Adjective
comparativemore laden
superlativemost laden
Verb
third-person singular presentladens
present participleladening
past participleladened
pastladened

Origin of laden

See lade.

Words formed from laden

Phrases with laden

Words that rhyme with laden

Questions about laden

What does laden mean?
Laden means weighed down with a load, burdened.
What part of speech is laden?
Laden can be an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce laden?
Laden is pronounced /ˈleɪdən/.

Words near laden in the dictionary

  1. lade
  2. Lade Vale
  3. laded
  4. lademan
  5. lademen
  6. laden
  7. ladened
  8. ladening
  9. ladenness
  10. ladens
  11. lader

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: laden (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-laden.wav.

Cite this entry: “laden.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/laden. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.