RIDDLED Synonyms: 50 Similar and Opposite Words

riddled

verb

past tense of riddle

as in drilled

to make a hole or series of holes in several signs along the highway were riddled by buckshot

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

as in suffused

to spread throughout the newspaper exposé revealed a gaming commission that is riddled with corruption

Synonyms & Similar Words

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Recent Examples of riddled Projected on a large screen was a map riddled with bizarre errors. — ABC News, 21 Aug. 2026 The Liberty entered 2026 with title expectations, and Stewart looked poised to contend for her third MVP award after a 2025 season riddled with nagging injuries. — Annie Costabile, New York Times, 20 Aug. 2026 Twelve days later, Rajab’s body was found in a car riddled with bullets. — Oren Liebermann, CNN Money, 19 Aug. 2026 Current legal avenues are also riddled with loopholes, as Big Tech fights them in court, claiming that some laws infringe on free speech. — Allyson Kapin, Forbes.com, 17 Aug. 2026 Worse than that, real-world sensor data is often so ambiguous, incomplete, and riddled with noise that the only way to describe it is borderline chaotic. — David Szondy august 11, New Atlas, 11 Aug. 2026 But the squabble over the Brooklyn Village development is another mark in the neighborhood’s history that’s riddled with government interference and disinvestment. — Desiree Mathurin, Charlotte Observer, 6 Aug. 2026 Second Line was my mom — her interludes riddled the album with her depiction of what is meant to be a Creole woman in New Orleans. — Larisha Paul, Rolling Stone, 5 Aug. 2026 Although 5-MeO-DMT can produce experiences of overwhelming intensity, often interpreted as encounters with ultimate truth, the history of toad smoking is riddled with false leads and misinformation. — Kimon De Greef, Longreads, 4 Aug. 2026

Recent Examples of Synonyms for riddled

Verb

The two-time All-Star shot 4 of 6 from the field and drilled two 3s.

— James Boyd, New York Times, 15 Aug. 2026
Peters then drilled a first-pitch fastball from Tigers starter Jackson Jobe over the right-field wall for the tying two-run home run, his seventh of the season.

— LaMond Pope, Chicago Tribune, 15 Aug. 2026

Definition of drilled

Verb

After setting her wildly popular debut The Tiger's Wife in a Balkans suffused with myth and magic, the author turned in subsequent books to the Old West and a city redolent of New York.

— Colin Dwyer, NPR, 4 Aug. 2026
The threat is still there, suffused into the air like a memory, but for a time the choice between love and survival no longer feels mutually exclusive to Nino and Yasmina.

— David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 22 July 2026

Definition of suffused

Verb

Investigators believe the bullet that pierced the restaurant window was fired from inside a passing vehicle on Vista Village Drive.

— Teri Figueroa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Aug. 2026
Poy was wounded in a second land mine explosion that pierced his face and body with shrapnel and killed three of his colleagues.

— ABC News, ABC News, 18 Aug. 2026

Definition of pierced

Verb

The leaf canopy was so dense that at times only a half-light, a sort of dusky murk, penetrated to the forest floor where the hounds ran.

— Paul Schullery, Outdoor Life, 13 Aug. 2026
The children are dismembered and penetrated, flayed alive, disemboweled, and their intestines set alight.

— Literary Hub, Literary Hub, 12 Aug. 2026

Definition of penetrated

Verb

Comedy capers like this usually deflate in the third act when their pleasures get punctured by unfunny gunfire.

— Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times, 13 Aug. 2026
While driving around the town of Tremont in a sleek red Model S, an unnamed driver hit an object on the road which punctured the vehicle’s lithium-ion battery, local station WABI5 reported.

— Joe Wilkins, Futurism, 12 Aug. 2026

Definition of punctured

Verb

As men, women and children flooded across the border between Morocco and Spain, into the autonomous city of Ceuta at the end of July, European populists and anti-immigrant politicians capitalized on the shocking images of human desperation.

— Vasco Cotovio, CNN Money, 21 Aug. 2026
And now, since Panettiere's death, fans have again flooded Neutrogena's social media.

— Betty Lin-Fisher, USA Today, 20 Aug. 2026

Definition of flooded

Browse Nearby Words

riddle

riddled

riddled (out)

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“Riddled.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/riddled. Accessed 24 Aug. 2026.

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Synonyms of riddled

verb

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