It is a kind of hell, but not the spiraling inferno the Stalker Virgil led Dante through, but a sodden, sloppy Tartarus.
There is Walker McNally, a sodden drunk for whom the pouring and stirring of a drink becomes a kind of sexual foreplay.
His complexion was pale and sodden, and his hair short, dark, and sleek.
When dawn came, they were on the move, glad to stretch their sodden limbs.
Then he replaced the sodden end of his cigarette between them.
The colours were indistinguishable at the distance, drenched and sodden.
Her hair, streaming down in a sodden mass, was matted with blood.
Arrived there, he removed his coat and neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings.
He could barely make out the sodden steps and––they were receding.
It creaked and gave back a sodden, hollow sound, but at first there was no response.
"soaked or softened in water," 1820, earlier "resembling something that has been boiled a long time" (1590s), originally "boiled" (c.1300), from Old English soden "boiled," strong past participle of seoþan "to cook, boil" (see seethe). For sense evolution from "heat in water" to "immerse in water" cf. bath.
Old English seoþan "to boil," also figuratively, "be troubled in mind, brood" (class II strong verb; past tense seaþ, past participle soden), from Proto-Germanic *seuthan (cf. Old Norse sjoða, Old Frisian siatha, Dutch zieden, Old High German siodan, German sieden "to seethe"), from PIE root *seut- "to seethe, boil."
Driven out of its literal meaning by boil (v.); it survives largely in metaphoric extensions. Figurative use, of persons or populations, "to be in a state of inward agitation" is recorded from 1580s (implied in seething). It had wider figurative uses in Old English, e.g. "to try by fire, to afflict with cares." Now conjugated as a weak verb, and past participle sodden (q.v.) is no longer felt as connected.
