Wounding

How to spell wounding

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wounding

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wounding mean?

1. verbPresent participle of wound: inflicting an injury or hurt on a person or animal.
2. adjectiveCausing emotional pain; deeply hurtful.

Wounding in a sentence

• verb

  The report described the wounding of two officers during the raid.

• adjective

  Her wounding comment about his weight stayed with him for weeks.

• verb

  Wounding an attacker in self-defence can still raise complex legal questions.

• adjective

  The manager apologised for the wounding tone of his email.

Where does wounding come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word 'wound' descends from the Old English noun 'wund', meaning an injury to the body, which had close relatives across the Germanic languages, including the Old Saxon and Old High German 'wunta'. From this came the verb 'wundian', meaning to inflict such an injury, and 'wounding' is simply that verb extended with the familiar '-ing' ending. The pronunciation is worth noting, because the injury sense keeps the long 'oo' vowel inherited from Old English, quite unlike the unrelated 'wound' that is the past tense of 'wind' (as in winding a clock). Over the centuries the meaning broadened from purely physical hurt to take in emotional and verbal harm, so a remark can be 'wounding' just as a blade can. The 'ou' spelling, though it sounds like a plain 'oo', preserves the older English habit of writing that vowel with those two letters, and that is the small trap for modern writers.

How the word is built

• wound (injury, hurt)
• -ing (present participle / verbal noun suffix)