SADDEN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sadden mean? 

• SADDEN (verb)
  The verb SADDEN has 2 senses:

1. make unhappy

2. come to feel sad

  Familiarity information: SADDEN used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SADDEN (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they sadden    ... he / she / it saddens   
Past simple: saddened   
Past participle: saddened   
-ing form: saddening   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Make unhappy

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Context example:

The news of her death saddened me

Hypernyms (to "sadden" is one way to...):

affect; impress; move; strike (have an emotional or cognitive impact upon)

Cause:

sadden (come to feel sad)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "sadden"):

weigh down; weigh on (be oppressive or disheartening to)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody

Sentence examples:

The bad news will sadden him
The performance is likely to sadden Sue

Antonym:

gladden (make glad or happy)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Come to feel sad

Classified under:

Verbs of feeling

Hypernyms (to "sadden" is one way to...):

experience; feel (undergo an emotional sensation or be in a particular state of mind)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Antonym:

gladden (become glad or happy)

 Context examples 

Fanny's heart was not absolutely the only saddened one amongst them, as she soon began to acknowledge to herself.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I wish you could have gone, but there is no hope of it this time, so try to bear it cheerfully, and don't sadden Amy's pleasure by reproaches or regrets.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Yet I should be loth to blame you, for I doubt not that what you said was not meant to sadden me, nor to bring my sore affliction back to my mind.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She said little, but she saddened my life by insisting that I should be for ever clean and tidy.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It saddens me and gladdens me, the gait with which we are leaving San Francisco behind and with which we are foaming down upon the tropics.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

She left his side to explore the room, examining the clothes-lines of notes overhead, learning the mystery of the tackle used for suspending his wheel under the ceiling, and being saddened by the heap of manuscripts under the table which represented to her just so much wasted time.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

An hour's complete leisure for such reflections as these, on a dark November day, a small thick rain almost blotting out the very few objects ever to be discerned from the windows, was enough to make the sound of Lady Russell's carriage exceedingly welcome; and yet, though desirous to be gone, she could not quit the Mansion House, or look an adieu to the Cottage, with its black, dripping and comfortless veranda, or even notice through the misty glasses the last humble tenements of the village, without a saddened heart.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The beautiful, kind eyes are larger, and in them lies an expression that saddens one, although it is not sad itself.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Some members of their society sent away, and the spirits of many others saddened—it was all sameness and gloom compared with the past—a sombre family party rarely enlivened.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)