Roger Woodham replies:'wound', 'hurt', 'harm', 'damage'

These verbs and related nouns and adjectives are quite close in meaning and use, but there are a number of distinguishing characteristics.

hurt (verb)

If part of your body hurts, you feel pain there. If you hurt someone, you cause them to feel pain. Note that verbs that refer to physical feelings (hurt, ache, etc) can often be used in simple or progressive tenses with no difference in meaning:

You can also hurt someone's feelings, and cause them to feel emotional pain:

hurt (noun/adjective)


injure (verb)

In the sentence describing people suffering from shock above, hurt could be replaced by injured. If you injure somebody, you cause physical damage to part of their body usually the result of an accident or through fighting:

injured / injury (nouns) / injured (adj)

wound (verb)

If you wound somebody, you inflict physical damage on part of their body, especially a cut or a hole in their flesh caused by a gun, a knife or some other weapon, often in battle.

In English, it is often a matter of knowing which adjectives collocate with which nouns and which adverbs go with which verbs. In this particular word family, the adverb-verb collocations are normally as follows: badly hurt / seriously injured / mortally wounded. You will also have noticed that with these verbs the passive voice is often used.

wound (noun) / wounded (adj)

We also have the expressions: to rub salt into the wound, i.e. to make an unpleasant situation even worse and to lick one's wounds, i.e. to slowly recover after being defeated or made to feel ashamed or unhappy:


damage (verb)

It is things that are damaged, not people. Damage is the physical harm that is caused to an object. More abstract qualities, such as reputations and the economy can also be damaged. Compare the following:

damage (noun) / damaged (adj)

However, we can also speak of someone being brain-damaged (not brain-injured) or suffering brain damage. But this is an exception. Normally damage relates to inanimate objects:

We also have the informal expression: What's the damage? meaning 'What is the damage to my purse or my pocket?' in other words: What do I owe you in payment for this service or these goods?:

harm (verb)

People OR things can be harmed or physically damaged:

harm (noun)

We have a number of expressions with the noun harm which are confusingly similar: will come to no harm, it will do no harm toбн, there's no harm inбн, no harm done:

harmful / harmless (adjs)

Harmful and harmless describe something that has or does not have a bad effect on something else: