Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a derog. intensifier.

1912		D.H. Lawrence letter 3 July in Coll. Letters (1962) I 134: Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines [...] the miserable sodding rotters [...] that make up England today.
1922		‘J.H. Ross’ Mint (1955) 101: Our mild sergeant [...] adjured us [...] for the love of Mike to stop our sodding row.
1929		‘Henry Green’ Living (1978) 223: ‘It [i.e. Australia] am a grand country,’ ’e said to me, ‘this [i.e. England] be a poor sodding place for a poor bleeder’, ’e said. ‘I’m for goin’.’.
1930		(con. 1918) J. Hanley German Prisoner 32: ‘I wish to Christ this soddin’ fog would lift’.
1941		P. Larkin letter 16 Apr. in Thwaite Sel. Letters (1992) 11: This letter will be difficult to write on several counts. (a) this sodding vile pen.
1959		A. Sillitoe ‘The Disgrace of Jim Scarfedale’ Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1960) 128: It would have made my heart bleed if I hadn’t guessed he’d been such a sodding fool.
1967		K. Amis letter 1 Nov. in Leader (2000) 689: Your letter announcing her hospitalisation had no sodding zip-code on the address.
1976		J. Rosenthal Bar Mitzvah Boy Scene 66: What the hell do you mean you went for a haircut! Is that why you left? To go for a sodding haircut?
1982		P. Barker Union Street 35: She needed a woman to talk to, but in all this sodding street there wasn’t one of ’em you could trust.
1995		M. Simpson ‘Prufrock Scoused’ Catching Up with Hist. 21: Its as soddin borin as someone avin der appendicks out.
1998		M. Newall ‘Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knyght’ in Indep. Weekend Rev. 26 Dec. 1: Soone cayme Autumne and thenne soddynge Wynter agayne.
2005		H. Mantel Beyond Black 37: My boyfriend that was killed in a pile-up on the sodding M25.