stricken
Americanverb
adjective
-
hit or wounded by a weapon, missile, or the like.
-
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
-
laid low, as by disease or sickness
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deeply affected, as by grief, love, etc
-
archaic wounded or injured
Other Word Forms
- strickenly adverb
- unstricken adjective
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.
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
Madigan: I feel stricken by what’s happening with the Washington Post, stricken.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 19, 2026
The company also operates the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant, now being decommissioned.
From Barron's • Jan. 22, 2026
Maduro was at his side the rest of the way: serving in congress, then as foreign minister and vice president before Chávez, stricken with cancer, anointed him successor in 2013.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 30, 2025
Karl spots him, too, and a stricken look crosses his face.
From "The Boy Who Dared" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
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.
