Being affected by strong feelings and attraction, as well as romantic love, warrants the use of smitten. My best friend married Sky Blue, the high school sweetheart I was so smitten with. Bob visited New York last year. He was so smitten by the city that he decided to live there. Sometimes, the outcomes can be negative . . . He was smitten with the plague. During the black plague in Europe, as many as one-third of the population were smitten with the disease. In biblical contexts, to be smitten meant to be punished or struck down.

It’s usually used romantically for people, but you could use it to describe some kind of intellectual pursuit. He’s smitten with French/Ancient Greece. (He has recently developed an attachment to these subjects. ‘By’ and ‘with’ are both used) It’s not being ‘happy for’ something.

I think the primary meaning of 'smite' has to do with hitting someone hard with an object. I guess it can be interpreted in a romantic sense as being hit hard with love. But it has physical connotations too - as what one can do with a sword!

As Dan describes, it can mean quite the opposite of a romantic relationship. It is similar to "destroyed" or "devastated". Because of this opposite meaning, it is a lovely word for romance. Italians use a similar idiom. They say someone has been "cooked" by somebody.

It literally means "to hit or strike." It's the past participle of "to smite." (Well, one of them; the other is "smote.") "To smite" is an archaic word meaning to hit or strike, particularly in battle. You hear it most often in stories, tales, and legends of medieval knights. The dragon was smitten by St. George. Jack London, writing about the freezing cold Arctic, wrote: "The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow." It carries an idea of intensity and violence. Europe was smitten by the Black Death. The tree was smitten by the thunderbolt. So, figuratively, it can mean to "strike" with deep feeling. It is often used to mean "struck" romantically. So can other some expressions that literally mean "hit." "She seems very smitten by him." "He was bowled over by her." "She found him stunning." "He looked at her and was thunderstruck." I wouldn't use it to mean "happy" because it conveys the ideas of intensity, surprise, and a feeling so strong and intense that it is difficult to think clearly. It is, figuratively, violent.