injure

UK/ˈɪn.dʒə/US/ˈɪn.d͡ʒɚ/

verbB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,316 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: injured, injuring, injures

To injure is to hurt somebody's body. Injure your back, badly injured, injure a player.

It is the word used in reports and statistics, where hurt is what people say. It also has an older sense of wronging somebody, which survives in injured party, meaning the one who suffered the wrong rather than any bodily harm.

Definitions of injure

1verbinjureTo hurt somebody's body.B1+
“Two climbers were injured when rocks fell from the cliff above them.”

injure is a hurting.

Where it comes from

A back-formation from injury, from Latin iniuria, a wrong — in, not, plus ius, right or law.

Proto-Indo-European
*h₂yew-
Latin
iniūria — injustice; wrong; offense
Anglo-Norman
injurie
Middle English
injurie
English, today
injure

Built from

in- · Latin — not
ius · Latin — right, law

A a back-formation from injury, from Middle English injurie, from Anglo-Norman injurie, from Latin iniūria (“injustice; wrong; offense”), from in- (“not”) + ius (“right, law”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

injure in the wild

Despite their less-lethal nature, stun grenades are still capable of causing harm, and can injure or kill when detonating in close proximity.
Stun grenade
Melting boots and laces will serve to further injure a crewman and make evacuating him out of the vehicle more difficult.
Tanker boot
When the sabiki rig is reeled in, the hooks and leaders are drawn directly into the rod where they will not tangle or injure the angler.
Sabiki
In prisons and forced labour camps, people sometimes self-injure to avoid forced labor and spend time in the relatively less stressful conditions of the infirmary or barracks.
Self-inflicted wounds in the military
Line-shaft conveyors are also extremely safe for people to work around because the elastic belts can stretch and not injure fingers should any get caught underneath them.
Lineshaft roller conveyor

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the injurie family

injury

injure — used about once every 3,333 pages · #8,316 · point at the bar for the others

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