Injury

How to spell injury

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce injury

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does injury mean?

1. nounPhysical harm or damage done to a person's body, or more broadly any wrong or hurt suffered.

Injury in a sentence

• The player left the field with a knee injury.

• The report listed every workplace injury from the past year.

Where does injury come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin iniuria, meaning 'a wrong' or 'an injustice', which was built from in- 'not' and ius (genitive iuris), meaning 'law' or 'right'. The literal idea was therefore something done that is contrary to right, a violation or wrong inflicted on a person. English took it up through Anglo-French and Old French injurie in the late 1300s, at first in the broad sense of a wrong or insult done to someone, including damage to reputation. Over time the everyday meaning narrowed toward physical harm or hurt to the body, the sense most people reach for today. The same iuris root sits inside familiar words like 'justice', 'jury', and 'jurisdiction', and that hidden 'jur' is exactly the part writers should anchor on, since the unstressed middle can blur into a vague schwa when spelling from memory.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• jur (from Latin jus/juris: law, right)
• -y (noun suffix)