What does injure mean?
Injure means to cause harm, particularly physical injury to a person or animal. It can also be used more broadly for damage or impairment: a remark may injure someone’s reputation, and a decision may injure an organization’s interests. The verb is less common in ordinary conversation than hurt, but it is widely used in formal, legal, medical, and news reporting, where its greater specificity can be useful. Its related noun, injury, describes harm to the body or, by extension, damage to reputation, property, or interests. The word also forms several familiar derivatives, including injured, injurious, and injuriously. Together, these forms express the idea of harm across both literal and figurative contexts, from a physical wound to reputational or financial damage.
To cause physical harm or injury to a person, animal, or body part.
"He injured his wrist while repairing the fence."
Often used in formal, medical, legal, and news contexts; in everyday speech, hurt is often more natural.
To damage, impair, or harm something, especially a reputation, interest, or other abstract entity.
"The allegations were withdrawn without injuring the company’s reputation."
This figurative sense is less frequent than the physical-harm sense but is standard in formal English.
Injure and injury share a Roman root meaning “wrong” or “harm,” linking physical wounds with the idea of wrongdoing.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of injure
The word entered Middle English through Old French, ultimately deriving from Latin injuriare, “to injure or wrong.” The Latin noun injuria meant “harm, injury, or wrong,” and reflects a wider family of forms now represented in English by injury and injurious. The development preserves the word’s long-standing connection between physical damage and moral or social wrong.
Related word forms
How injure is actually used
In everyday speech, hurt is more common than injure. Injure is especially frequent in formal, legal, medical, and news contexts.
Easily confused with injure
Injury normally implies harm to a person or animal, while damage can refer to harm to property, objects, systems, or abstract things.
Harm is the broader and more frequent word for any kind of injury or damage, whereas injure often focuses on physical injury or a specific act of causing harm.