Ridden is an adjective that presents illness as something possessing, burdening, or invading a body, place, or community. A disease-ridden village, house, or body seems not merely unhealthy but overwhelmed by an active force. In poetry, the word is frequently figurative, applied to societies ridden with fear, injustice, vice, or decay. Its force comes from the sense that the sufferer cannot easily escape what afflicts it, making physical disease a potent image for entrenched moral, emotional, and social damage.

"Ridden" means dominated, oppressed, or thoroughly afflicted by something burdensome—most commonly used in compound words like disease-ridden, grief-ridden, or guilt-ridden. In poetic diction, using "ridden" emphasizes an inescapable state of psychological or physical oppression. Students should analyze how poets use ridden compounds to quickly establish an atmosphere of total, overwhelming burden, where the persona is completely possessed by their affliction. Related terms include afflicted, burdened, beset, and dominated.