Scar
nounA mark left on the skin or a surface after a wound or injury has healed.
How to spell scar
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce scar
What does scar mean?
- nounA mark left on the skin or a surface after a wound or injury has healed.
- verbTo leave a lasting mark on skin, a surface, or someone's feelings.
Scar in a sentence
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noun
The surgery left a faint scar across her knee.
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verb
The accident could scar his face for life.
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noun
He traced the old scar on his hand from a childhood fall.
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verb
The loss would deeply scar the whole family.
Where does scar come from?
Language of origin: Greek
The word for a healed wound mark comes from the Greek eskhara, which literally meant 'hearth' or 'fireplace' and, by extension, the scab or crust left by a burn. Late Latin took this up as eschara, and Old French softened it into escare, the dried crust over a sore. English borrowed it in the late 1300s, gradually narrowing the meaning to the permanent mark left behind once a wound has healed. The figurative sense, a lasting emotional or psychological mark, developed naturally from the physical one. A separate, unrelated 'scar' meaning a bare rocky crag or cliff comes instead from Old Norse sker, a skerry or reef, and survives mainly in northern British place names.
How the word is built
- scar (single root, no affixes)
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