injure

Pronunciation

• UK: /ˈɪn.dʒə/^[1]
• US: /ˈɪn.d͡ʒɚ/^[1]

Etymology

It is a back-formation from injury.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the MED, Etymonline and Skeat, it is instead borrowed from Old French injurier,^{[8][9][10][11]} from Latin iniūrior (“to do an injury”).^[9][8] The OED compares a rare Old French verb injurer of the 13th century.^[2] The noun is from Anglo-Norman injurie (“wrongful action”),^[9] from Latin iniūria (“wrong, injustice, insult, harm”), the feminine of iniūrius (“wrongful, unjust”) used as a noun,^[9][2] formed from in- (“not”) and iūs (“right, law”).^[9][2][11] The noun itself was used as a verb from the late 15th century, and injure displaced it between 1580 and 1640.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

To do an injustice to someone, to dishonour: about 1450, in the Speculum Christiani, where eniurez renders Latin iniuriatur.^[10][9]

Semantic evolution

The OED's first record of the verb, from before 1492 in Caxton's Vitas Patrum, already has the sense to hurt, harm or damage,^[2] while Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597) gives its first example of the sense to wrong a person.^[2] Around 1600 it could also mean to insult or slander someone, a sense that was obsolete by the 1650s.^[2] Johnson (1755) put the moral sense first, "to hurt unjustly; to wrong", before the general sense of harming.^[12] The sense of physical harm to the body later became the main one,^[4][8] and an intransitive use, to become injured, is recorded from 1848.^[2] An older noun injure, a by-form of injury borrowed from French injure, was used from Chaucer's time to 1596.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1450 – to wrong, to dishonour someone.^[10]
• before 1492 – to hurt, harm or damage.^[2]
• 1597 – to do a wrong to a person, in Shakespeare.^[2]
• 1848 – intransitive, to become injured.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To cause physical harm to a person, animal or part of the body; to hurt or wound: Two climbers were injured in the rockfall.^[8][3][7]
2. To damage or impair something, such as health or a reputation: The scandal injured his chances of election.^[8][3]
3. To hurt someone's feelings or pride; to offend.^[3][13][7]
4. To do an injustice to someone; to wrong.^[8][3][7][2]

Word family

• injurer
• injurable
• reinjure

Related words

• injurious
• injury
• injustice
• jury
• just
• jurist

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d e f The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
11. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House