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''smite'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260727004347-00-⌔

smite - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

smite (third-person singular simple present smites, present participle smiting, simple pastsmote or smited or (obsolete) smit, past participlesmitten or smote or smited or (obsolete) smit)

  • (archaic) To hit; to strike.
    • ✤ Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.1
    • ✤ That elf-maiden smote with her hand so white,
      “Sorrow and sickness on thee alight”
      That elf-maiden smote with her cap so small,
      “No more shall priest’s benison on thee fall!”      2
    • ✤ A harp can give out but a certain quantity of sound, however heavily it is smitten.3
    • ✤ It was April 22, 1831, and a young man was walking down Whitehall in the direction of Parliament Street. […]. He halted opposite the Privy Gardens, and, with his face turned skywards, listened until the sound of the Tower guns smote again on the ear and dispelled his doubts.4
    • ✤ “Right you are!” I cried. “We must believe the other until we prove it false. We can’t afford to give up heart now, when we need heart most. The branch was carried down by a river, and we are going to find that river.” I smote my open palm with a clenched fist, to emphasize a determination unsupported by hope.5
    • ✤ Tony Stark makes you feel
      He’s a cool exec with a heart of steel.
      As Iron Man, all jets ablaze,
      He’s fighting and smiting with repulsor rays!
      Amazing armor! That’s Iron Man!
      A blazing power! That’s Iron Man!      6
  • To strike down or kill with godly force.
    • ✤ And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand. And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.7
    • ✤ For it is written, I will ſmite the Shepheard, and the Sheep ſhall be ſcattered.* […] Becauſe the Shepheard was to be ſmitten, they as Sheepe muſt be ſcattered. The Scope of which place is, to prove Chriſt the true Paſtor of the Flocke, even by his ſmiting and abaſement; and ſo moſt aptly alledged that the Diſciples might have matter of ſtrength and comfort thence where they ſtumbled and offended themſelves.*8
  • To injure with divine power.
    • ✤ VERSE 12. And the fourth angel ſounded, and the third part of the ſun was ſmitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the ſtars, ſo as the third part of them was darkened, and the day ſhone not for a third part of it, and the night likewiſe. […] [T]his Jeſus which ſignifies the ſun, was ſmitten with persecution and ſufferings in the time of his miniſtry, that there could but a third part of his heavenly light ſhine upon the people of the Jews, and happy were thoſe that this light did ſhine upon.9
  • To kill violently; to slay.
    • ✤ “She is sitting in the great hall even now to do justice upon those who would have smitten thee and the Lion.”3
  • To put to rout in battle; to overthrow by war.
    • ✤ […] and it turned out, if you just dumped pure oxygen and kerosene into the combustion chamber, the torpedo would travel at fairly-high speed… just instantaneously in all directions at once, disassembling itself, and any nearby people, with considerable enthusiasm. Explaining that this was entirely-unacceptable behavior for a torpedo that was designed to smite the Emperor’s enemies didn’t really tend to work out that well, since they hadn’t yet invented the Machine Spirit, and, in any case, working out which bit of the torpedo you were supposed to talk to, or possibly scrape off the wall, was somewhat difficult once it had decided to launch a several-hundred-meter search into the realm of the honorable ancestors.10
  • To afflict; to chasten; to punish.
    • ✤ Let us not mistake the goodness of God, nor imagine that because he smites us, therefore we are forsaken by him.11
    • ✤ A country deprived of the Ganges is ſmitten; a family without learning is ſmitten; a woman without a child is ſmitten; a ſacrifice without the Brahman’s rights is ſmitten.12
  • (figuratively, now only in passive) To strike with love or infatuation.
    • ✤ Bob was smitten with Laura from the first time he saw her.
    • ✤ I was really smitten by the color combination, and soon repainted the entire house.
    • ✤ See what the charms that smite the simple heart,//Not touch’d by Nature, and not reach’d by art.13
    • ✤ Thus was written beneath the arms of Arthur of Lesser, duke of Brittany […] Love nonetheless made me feel his dart,/For my person was smitten and inflamed/In its soul by she for whom I bore my shield here: […]14
    • ✤ Maybe he was smitten with Clare. And maybe the fact that he didn’t want to leave meant it was past time he did.15

Noun

smite (plural smites)

  • (archaic, rare) A heavy strike with a weapon, tool, or the hand.
    • ✤ On the other hand, your soft-headed, softhearted sentimentalist, whose heart is in his waistcoat pocket, always at hand for use, he who picks out the pretty parts of modern novels, and the tender parts of affecting tales, never hears of two young people meeting one another, but he begins to think that a smite must follow.16
    • ✤ ‘That is just what I was about to venture to propose,’returned the doctor with a smite. But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below.17
    • ✤ Beale, who had not been driving very well, took a smite at his ball and sent it curving far away to the left into a mess of gorse of bramble bushes.18
    • ✤ As soon as the second scout fell dead, Catullus slammed the Alliance warrior with holy fire, followed quickly by a mind blast and a smite. Before the enemy knew what hit him, his health was exhausted.19
    • ✤ ‘Be gone, snake, do not poison my ears with your venom and lies. Your tricks and spells are no good in this place; no demon can hide its putrid face or mask its slithering voice. Your invasion is a smite to Balor, and you will all pay a dear price.’20

Etymology

From Middle English smiten, from Old English smītan (“to daub, smear, smudge; soil, defile, pollute”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡smītan, from Proto-Germanic ﹡smītaną (“to sling; throw; smear”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡smeyd- (“to smear, whisk, strike, rub”).

Cognate with Saterland Frisian smiete (“to throw, toss”), West Frisian smite (“to throw”), Dutch smijten (“to fling, hurl, throw”), German Low German smieten (“to throw, chuck, toss”), German schmeißen (“to fling, throw”), Danish smide (“to throw”), Swedish smita (“to run off (to)”), Gothic 𐌱𐌹𐍃𐌼𐌴𐌹𐍄𐌰𐌽 (bismeitan, “to besmear, anoint”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: smīt, IPA: /smaɪt/
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -aɪt

Printed 2026-07-27.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 5:39: ↩

  2. 1847 September 11, William J. Thoms, “The Folk-lore of Shakespeare”, in The Athenaeum, London, page 958, column 1: ↩

  3. 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC: ↩ ↩2

  4. 1906, Stanley J[ohn] Weyman, chapter I, in Chippinge Borough, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., →OCLC, page 01: ↩

  5. 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter 4, in The Land That Time Forgot, Chicago, Ill.: A. C. McClurg & Co., published 1924, →OCLC: ↩

  6. 1966, “Iron Man (theme song)”, Jacques Urbont (lyrics) (The Marvel Super Heroes (television series)): ↩

  7. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 3:19–20: ↩

  8. 1653, Thomas Taylor, “Peters Repentance. Marke 14.27.”, in The Works of that Faithful Servant of Jesus Christ, Dr. Thom. Taylor, Sometimes Minister of the Gospel in Aldermanbury, London. Not Hitherto Published, (though Earnestly Desired by the Very Many Experimental Christians,) because the Iniquity of Those Times could not Bear such Burning and Shining Light, as is here Handed Forth in these Several Treatises Following. […], London: Printed by T. R. & E. M. for John Bartlet the elder and John Bartlet the younger, and are to be sold at the Golden Cup near Austins gate in the new Building, →OCLC, page 6: ↩

  9. 1746, Lodowick[e] Muggleton, “CHAP. XXV [of the Book of Revelation].”, in True Interpretation of All the Chief Texts, and Mysterious Sayings and Visions Opened, of the Whole Book of the Revelation of St. John. Whereby is Unfolded, and Plainly Declared, those Wonderful Deep Mysteries and Visions Interpreted, Concerning the True God, and Alpha and Omega. With Variety of other Heavenly Secrets, which Have Never Been Pen’d, Nor Revel’d to Any Man since the Creation of the World to this Day, until Now ‎, London: First Printed for the Author, in the Year 1665. And now Re-printed by Subscription, →OCLC: ↩

  10. 2021 January 20, Drachinifel, 5:49 from the start, in Type 93 Long Lance Torpedo - Long Range Hole Poking Device ‎, archived from the original on 1 November 2022: ↩

  11. 1688, William Wake, Preparation for Death: ↩

  12. 1787 December, Charles Wilkins, “The Heetopades of Veeshnoo-Sarma. Translated from the Sanskreet Language. By Charles Wilkins.”, in The Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany, volume VI, number 36, Edinburgh: Printed for J. Sibbald: and sold by J[ohn] Murray, London, →OCLC, page 383: ↩

  13. 1757, Alexander Pope, The Works of Alexander Pope: Esq., with His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, volume 5, London: Printed for A. Millar; J. and R. Tonson; H. Lintot; and C. Bathurst., page 222: ↩

  14. 2001, René of Anjou, edited by Stephanie Viereck Gibbs and Kathryn Karczewska, The Book of the Love-smitten Heart, New York, N.Y.; London: Routledge, →ISBN, page 159: ↩

  15. 2014, Colleen Coble, Kristin Billerbeck, Denise Hunter, Diann Hunt, The Smitten Collection: Smitten, Secretly Smitten, and Smitten Book Club, Thomas Nelson Inc., →ISBN: ↩

  16. 1844, The Mysterious Man. A Novel. By the Author of Ben Bradshawe; the Man Without a Head [i.e. Frederick Chamier ‎, T. C. Newby, page 192: ↩

  17. 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll ‎, Doubleday, →ISBN, page 45: ↩

  18. 2007, Rupert Penny, Policeman’s Holiday ‎, Ramble House, →ISBN, page 82: ↩

  19. 2010, William Sims Bainbridge, The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World ‎, MIT Press, page 135: ↩

  20. 2013, Casey Hill, Hidden ‎, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 299: ↩

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