afflicted

[uh-flik-tid]

adjective

1. greatly distressed or troubled by bodily or mental pain.

   The severity of these symptoms predicts how well the afflicted individuals can live independently and maintain employment.

noun

(used with a singular or plural verb)

1. Usually the afflicted a person or persons distressed or troubled in such a way.

   Behind each of these killer diseases is the pain of despair, loneliness, and loss in the lives of the bereaved and the afflicted.

verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of afflict.

Other Word Forms

• afflictedness noun
• unafflicted adjective
• unafflictedly adverb
• unafflictedness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of afflicted¹

afflict ( def. ) + -ed ² ( def. )

Example Sentences

I think if you look at sort of notions of Christian morality, it also goes to notions of sort of innocence, being afflicted by demonic forces.

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Catholicism is the faith I was baptized in, the one I embraced as a teen and that’s the bedrock for my moral code of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.

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He died at age seventy-two of kidney cancer, a disease that afflicted many of the sailors who survived the K-19 disaster.

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The latter, afflicted by “the incurable disease of mediocrity,” has led a disappointing life yet still possesses a lust for it.

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It was a provocative message that resonated in some sectors of a country long afflicted by drug war bloodshed.

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Related Words

• depressed 
• stricken