Stricken

How to spell stricken

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stricken

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stricken mean?

1. adjectiveSeverely affected or overwhelmed by something unpleasant such as illness, grief, or disaster.
2. verbOfficially deleted or removed, especially a remark struck from an official record.

Stricken in a sentence

• adjective

  The family, stricken with grief, asked for privacy after the accident.

• verb

  The judge ordered the comment to be stricken from the court record.

• adjective

  Aid agencies rushed supplies to a region stricken by famine.

• verb

  The clause was stricken from the contract before signing.

Where does stricken come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the old past participle of the verb 'strike', which descends from the Old English strican, a Germanic verb that originally meant 'to stroke, rub, or move lightly over a surface'. Over the centuries the sense hardened from gentle stroking into the modern idea of dealing a sharp blow, and the verb developed two participle forms: the everyday 'struck' and the older 'stricken'. While 'struck' covers ordinary hitting, 'stricken' kept a more figurative life, describing someone overwhelmed or laid low by illness, grief, panic, or disaster. The same Germanic root also gave English the words 'streak' and 'stroke', which still carry that earlier idea of a line drawn across something. The spelling trap is the single -ck- followed by -en, since the doubled hard sound and the archaic ending feel less familiar than the plain 'struck'.

How the word is built

• strick- (from strike, to hit or afflict)
• -en (archaic past participle suffix)