laden

1 of 2

adjective

lad·en ˈlā-dᵊn

Synonyms of laden next

: carrying a load or burden

laden

2 of 2

verb

ladened; ladening ˈlād-niŋ

ˈlā-dᵊn-iŋ

transitive verb

: lade

heavily ladened with equipment—

Isabel M. Lewis

Did you know?

Something that is laden seems to be, or actually is, weighed down by the large amount of whatever it’s carrying: tree branches laden with fruit bend toward the ground; newspaper articles laden with technical jargon are hard to read; and sugar-laden cereal is very, very sweet. Laden has been used as an adjective to describe heavily loaded things for a millennium, but its source is an even older verb: lade, meaning primarily "to load something." Lade today mostly occurs in contexts relating to shipping; its related noun lading may be familiar from the phrase bill of lading, which refers to a document listing goods to be shipped and the terms of their transport. Laden is itself sometimes used as a verb meaning "to load something" (as in "ladening the truck with equipment"), and an adjectival form of that word sometimes appears too, as in "a truck ladened with equipment." Plain old laden is preferred in such cases though: "a truck laden with equipment."

Examples of laden in a Sentence

Verb laden a ship with emergency medical supplies

Recent Examples on the Web

Adjective

The result is a book laden with put-downs of the English working class, who are cast in eugenicist terms as a degenerate race. —

Lennard J. Davis, The Conversation, 13 Aug. 2024 Their new material is laden with art-historical references that are both channeled and subverted by Muholi. —

Victoria Woodcock, CNN, 8 Aug. 2024

Verb

Ships still laden with some 240 tons of aid that arrived just a day earlier turned back from Gaza, according to Cyprus, which has played a key role in trying to establish a sea route to bring food to the territory. —

Wafaa Shurafa, Samy Magdy, and Tia Goldenberg, The Christian Science Monitor, 2 Apr. 2024 The retailers’ graveyard is filled with once-proud brands, from upscale department store chain Lord & Taylor to RadioShack to Toys ‘R’ Us to Payless Shoes, all of which were forced into bankruptcy and closure due to the unaffordable debt that private equity owners ladened onto their balance sheets. —

Chris Isidore, CNN, 27 Feb. 2024 See all Example Sentences for laden

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'laden.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.