341: smitten Nov 14, 2015

'Smitten' means 'be strongly attracted to someone or something' even though it is the past participle of 'smite'. The idea of being smitten with someone is relatively recent; originally the participial definition related more to the verb. In a literary sense, this word means to 'strike with a firm blow', and the archaic connotation to this word is conquer or defeat, relating to military offenses or attack of a disease. If one would want to use the original sense of the word, but avoid the modern confusion, it is sometimes structurally possible to reorder the sentence with 'smote'.