Other forms: scars
A scar is the permanent mark a deep cut leaves after it heals. A deep scar, scar tissue, left a scar.
Scar tissue is collagen laid down in a different arrangement from the original skin, which is why it looks different, has no hair follicles and never quite matches. Emotional scars are the figurative use and the metaphor is exact enough to be worth it. Note that the word came through French from Greek.
1nounscarThe permanent mark a deep cut leaves.
“He has a scar on his chin from a fall when he was a boy.”
scar is a mark.
Old French escare comes from Latin eschara, from Greek eschara, the scab left by a burn.
Ancient Greek
ἐσχάρα — scab left from a burn
Latin
eschara
Old French
escare — scab
Middle English
scar
English, today
scar
From Middle English scar, scarre, a conflation of Old French escare (“scab”) (from Latin eschara, from Ancient Greek ἐσχάρα (“scab left from a burn”), and thus a a doublet of eschar) and Middle English skar (“incision, cut, fissure”) (from Old Norse skarð (“notch, chink, gap”), from Proto-Germanic skardaz (“gap, cut, fragment”)). Akin to Old Norse skor (“notch, score”), Old English sċeard (“gap, cut, notch”). More at shard. Displaced native dolg, dolgswæþ, and wundswaþu (“scar”). Not related to scarify.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA