Other forms: casualties
A casualty is a person hurt or killed in an accident or a war. Casualties were reported, avoid casualties, the casualty list.
In military use casualties include the wounded, the missing and the captured as well as the dead, which is why the figure is always larger than the death toll and often misread. In British hospitals, casualty is the old name for the accident and emergency department and is still what everybody says. Figuratively, a casualty is anything lost as a side effect: the first casualty of the reorganisation.
1nouncasualtyA person hurt or killed in an accident or war.
“The hospital was ready to receive casualties from the train crash.”
2nounhospitalThe hospital emergency department.
“He cut his hand badly, so we took him straight to casualty.”
casualty is a person hurt, or a loss.
The Latin cadere is to fall, the same falling behind an accident. A casualty is somebody who has fallen — in the accident, or worse.
hooks ontofall
Latin casualis means happening by chance, from casus, a fall or event — the same root as case and accident. A casualty is somebody to whom something merely happened, which is a bleak but accurate description.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱh₂d-
Latin
cāsuālis — happening by chance
Medieval Latin
casualitas
Middle French
casuel
English, today
casualty
Built from
From casual, from Middle French casuel, from Medieval Latin casualitas and Latin cāsuālis (“happening by chance”), from Latin cāsus (“event”) (English case), from cadere (“to fall”). Originally meaning “a chance event” (compare casual, as in “casual encounter”), it developed a negative meaning as “an unfortunate event”, especially the loss of a person.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA