Other forms: bruises
A bruise is the blue-purple mark on your skin after a hard knock. A nasty bruise, bruise easily, covered in bruises.
The colours are the blood breaking down under the skin — red to purple to green to yellow — and the sequence is regular enough to date an injury roughly. Fruit bruises too. Note that bruising easily can be worth mentioning to a doctor.
1nounbruiseA blue-purple mark left by a knock.
“He fell off his bike and got a big bruise on his knee.”
bruise is an injury.
Middle English brusen comes from two words that merged, both from a root meaning to break.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰrews- — to break
Middle English
bruisen
English, today
bruise
From Middle English bruisen, brusen, brosen, brisen, bresen, from a merger two words, both ultimately from Proto-Indo-European bʰrews- (“to break”):
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA