Wounded

How to spell wounded

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wounded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wounded mean?

1. adjectiveSuffering from a physical injury, especially one caused by a weapon or accident.
2. verbPast tense of wound: caused injury or deep emotional pain to someone.

Wounded in a sentence

• adjective

  The wounded soldier was carried to the field hospital.

• verb

  The harsh review deeply wounded the young author's confidence.

• adjective

  Rescue teams searched the rubble for any wounded survivors.

• verb

  The stray bullet wounded a bystander outside the bank.

Where does wounded come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word traces back to the Old English noun 'wund', meaning a hurt, sore, or injury, and the related verb 'wundian', meaning to inflict such a hurt. These came from a shared Germanic root that also produced the Dutch 'wond' and the German 'Wunde', all describing bodily damage. For most of its history the word kept its strict physical meaning of a cut or pierced flesh, but by the medieval period English speakers had extended it to emotional pain, so that feelings as well as bodies could be wounded. The modern form 'wounded' is simply the verb plus the regular '-ed' ending, working either as a past tense or as an adjective describing someone who has been hurt. The spelling trap lies in the 'ou', which is pronounced 'oo' as in 'moon' rather than 'ow' as in 'mound', a mismatch that survives from older pronunciations and trips up writers who spell by ear.

How the word is built

• wound (from Old English wund: a hurt, injury)
• -ed (past tense / participial adjective suffix)