stricken
Americanverb
adjective
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hit or wounded by a weapon, missile, or the like.
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beset or afflicted, as with disease, trouble, or sorrow.
stricken areas; a stricken family.
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deeply affected, as with grief, fear, or other emotions.
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characterized by or showing the effects of affliction, trouble, misfortune, a mental blow, etc..
stricken features.
adjective
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laid low, as by disease or sickness
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deeply affected, as by grief, love, etc
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archaic wounded or injured
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of stricken
First recorded in 1530–40
Explanation
Stricken means "overwhelmed by emotion." When you saw the pretty new girl at school smiling at you, you were so stricken you walked right into a wall. Stricken means "affected," whether it's in a good way — being so stricken by spring fever that you can't stop singing and goofing around — or bad, like being stricken by a real fever and a sore throat and the chills and. . . you get the idea. You can also be stricken by fear, like a family so stricken by fear of bedbugs that they cancelled their hotel reservation and just slept in their car.
Vocabulary lists containing stricken
The Outsiders
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List 6
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Bud, Not Buddy
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Public alarm over the illness began to grow following reports that three passengers died aboard the stricken vessel, MV Hondius.
From Los Angeles Times • May 11, 2026
Better equipped to mother Boy No. 2 or stricken with learned helplessness from being coddled by an expert on my phone day in and day out?
From Slate • May 10, 2026
The version detected aboard the stricken Hondius ship was a rare strain known as the Andes virus, which can be transmitted between humans.
From Barron's • May 7, 2026
The item, which goes under the hammer in Penshurst later this month, was awarded to the engineer of a steamship responsible for saving more than 700 of the stricken ocean liner's passengers in April 1912.
From BBC • Apr. 14, 2026
Mama used to tear photos from magazines, photos of the Dust Bowl years in the 1930s in America, when a long drought had stricken the Midwest.
From "A Place to Belong" by Cynthia Kadohata
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
