DEFINITION
verb
1. to strike sharply or heavily;
2a. to kill or severely injure by striking;
b. to attack or afflict suddenly and injuriously;
3. to affect as if by striking.
EXAMPLES
1. Susan jokingly declared that her mother would smite her if she ever went out in the winter with wet hair.
2. “For 10 years or more I was that guy at work with the order form and the sheepish grin, guilt-tripping colleagues into buying ‘discount cards’ and inflated-price cookie dough that they didn’t want. For me to then turn down the next wave of sheepishly grinning co-workers would be like challenging God to smite me with a lightning bolt just on principle.” — From an editorial by Robert Price in the Bakersfield Californian, February 15, 2014
DID YOU KNOW?
Today’s word has been part of the English language for a very long time; the earliest documented use in print dates to the 12th century. “Smite” can be traced back to an Old English word meaning “to smear or defile” and is a distant relative of the Scottish word “smit,” meaning “to stain, contaminate, or infect.” In addition to the straightforward “strike” and “attack” senses that we’ve defined and illustrated above, “smite” also has a softer side. It can mean “to captivate or take”—a sense that is frequently used in the past participle in such contexts as “smitten by her beauty” or “smitten with him” (meaning “in love with him”).
