lade

Most of us know lade in its past participle form laden, as shown in our examples. Likely also familiar is the adjective laden, best distinguished from the verb by its placement before nouns, as in "laden ships" or "a laden heart." (The adjective is also at work in hyphenated terms like "sugar-laden.") Lade has been in use for more than a millennium and formerly had a nominal counterpart: the noun lade meaning "load" or "cargo" dates from around the same time but hasn't been in use since the early 16th century. A few short decades after it faded from active use, the noun lading took on the same meaning. Lading is still in use and appears most often in "bill of lading"-a term referring to a document that lists goods being shipped and specifies the terms of their transport.