Riddled

How to spell riddled

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce riddled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does riddled mean?

1. adjectiveThoroughly permeated or filled with something undesirable, such as holes, faults, or disease.
2. verbPast tense of riddle: pierced with many holes or sifted through a coarse sieve.

Riddled in a sentence

• adjective

  The budget report was riddled with errors that the auditor flagged.

• verb

  The gunfire riddled the metal sign with dozens of small holes.

• adjective

  The damp bathroom wall was riddled with patches of black mould.

• verb

  The labourer riddled the gravel to remove the larger stones.

Where does riddled come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the verb 'to riddle', which goes back to the Old English noun 'hriddel', meaning a coarse sieve used to sift grain or gravel. To riddle something originally meant to pass it through such a sieve, and because a sieve is full of holes, the verb soon took on the vivid sense of piercing something with many holes, as in a board riddled with woodworm or a wall riddled with bullets. From there the meaning broadened figuratively to anything thoroughly permeated or shot through with a fault, so a document could be riddled with errors or a body riddled with disease. It is worth noting that this 'sieve' riddle is a completely different word from the 'riddle' that means a puzzling question, which comes instead from Old English 'rædels' meaning a conjecture or opinion. The doubled d and the silent unstressed ending are the spelling traps that linger from the older Germanic form.

How the word is built

• riddle (from Old English hriddel: a coarse sieve)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)