![]() Young Amorists smitten with Bellesa's lookĬaught by the Gills, and fastned to your Book. Me-thinks from utmost Inns of Court I see But! In the middle of the 17th century we begin to see signs that getting smitten might not be so bad after all. In short, it was not a very good time to be smitten. If we look at books published in the first half of the 17th century, the following is a very partial list of the kinds of things people were getting smitten with: leprosy, death, the plague, blindness, fear, sorrow, remorse, a most stinking and vile disease, ulcers, boils, the sword, fiery darts from heaven, the pox, barrenness, angels, God’s displeasure/hand/scourges/rod/terrible thunderbolts/wrath… Smite has had a number of senses over the ages, most of which had to do with striking, hitting, injuring, punishing, or afflicting someone. Smite comes from an Old English word meaning “to smear or defile,” and the meanings of the word did not improve very much when it moved from Old English to Middle English and on to Early Modern English. This past participle of smite may be the most common sense of the word found today, but it is also a bit of an outlier, and markedly different from most of the other senses. Nowadays, when we refer to someone as smitten we are most likely saying that they are captivated or infatuated with a thing or a person (usually a person). Turner, "The Fifth Plague of Egypt." Despite the painting's title, it was exhibited with a quotation describing the seventh plague: "The hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast."Īnd we have even more words which may not have senses that are opposite to each other, but are still dissimilar enough to invite question.
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