Injured

How to spell injured

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce injured

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does injured mean?

1. adjectivePhysically harmed or wounded.
2. verbPast tense of injure: caused physical harm to someone or something.

Injured in a sentence

• adjective

  The injured cyclist was taken to hospital for an x-ray.

• verb

  He injured his shoulder while lifting heavy boxes in the warehouse.

• adjective

  Paramedics treated the injured passengers at the roadside.

• verb

  The fall on the icy steps injured several commuters that morning.

Where does injured come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin injuria, meaning 'a wrong' or 'an injustice', which was built from in- meaning 'not' and jus or juris meaning 'law' or 'right'; so the literal idea was something 'not right', an act against what is lawful. From the noun came the verb sense of doing harm, and English borrowed the family through Old French in the late Middle Ages. The verb 'injure' settled in around the 1500s, originally meaning 'to do wrong to' someone before narrowing toward the physical sense of 'to hurt'. The form 'injured' is simply that verb with the past-participle ending '-ed', used both as a past tense and as an adjective. The same juris root survives in everyday words like 'jury', 'justice' and 'perjury', which is a useful reminder that the middle of the word is spelled j-u-r and not j-e-r.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• jur (from Latin jus/juris: law, right)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)