Adjacent Words

Harm definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

H`ARM, n.
1. Injury; hurt; damage; detriment.
Do thyself no harm. Acts 16.
He shall make amends for the harm he hath done in the holy thing. Leviticus 5.
2. Moral wrong; evil; mischief; wickedness; a popular sense of the word.
H`ARM, v.t. To hurt; to injure; to damage; to impair soundness of body, either animal or vegetable.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: any physical damage to the body caused by violence or accident or fracture etc. [syn: injury, hurt, harm, trauma]
2: the occurrence of a change for the worse [syn: damage, harm, impairment]
3: the act of damaging something or someone [syn: damage, harm, hurt, scathe] v
1: cause or do harm to; "These pills won't harm your system"

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: Middle English, from Old English hearm; akin to Old High German harm injury, Old Church Slavic sram? shame Date: before 12th century 1. physical or mental damage ; injury 2. mischief, hurt II. transitive verb Date: before 12th century to cause harm to Synonyms: see injure • harmer noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. & v. --n. hurt, damage. --v.tr. cause harm to. Phrases and idioms: out of harm's way in safety. Etymology: OE hearm, hearmian f. Gmc

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Harm Harm, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Harmed; p. pr. & vb. n. Harming.] [OE. harmen, AS. hearmian. See Harm, n.] To hurt; to injure; to damage; to wrong. Though yet he never harmed me. --Shak. No ground of enmity between us known Why he should mean me ill or seek to harm. --Milton.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Harm Harm, n. [OE. harm, hearm, AS. hearm; akin to OS. harm, G. harm grief, Icel. harmr, Dan. harme, Sw. harm; cf. OSlav. & Russ. sram' shame, Skr. crama toil, fatigue.] 1. Injury; hurt; damage; detriment; misfortune. 2. That which causes injury, damage, or loss. We, ignorant of ourselves, Beg often our own harms. --Shak. Syn: Mischief; evil; loss; injury. See Mischief.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(harms, harming, harmed) Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English. 1. To harm a person or animal means to cause them physical injury, usually on purpose. The hijackers seemed anxious not to harm anyone. = injure, hurt VERB: V n 2. Harm is physical injury to a person or an animal which is usually caused on purpose. All dogs are capable of doing harm to human beings. N-UNCOUNT: oft N to n 3. To harm a thing, or sometimes a person, means to damage them or make them less effective or successful than they were. ...a warning that the product may harm the environment... = damage, ruin VERB: V n 4. Harm is the damage to something which is caused by a particular course of action. To cut taxes would probably do the economy more harm than good. 5. If you say that someone or something will come to no harm or that no harm will come to them, you mean that they will not be hurt or damaged in any way. There is always a lifeguard to ensure that no one comes to any harm... PHRASE: V inflects 6. If you say it does no harm to do something or there is no harm in doing something, you mean that it might be worth doing, and you will not be blamed for doing it. They are not always willing to take on untrained workers, but there's no harm in asking. PHRASE: V inflects 7. If you say that there is no harm done, you are telling someone not to worry about something that has happened because it has not caused any serious injury or damage. There, now, you're all right. No harm done. PHRASE: usu v-link PHR 8. If someone is put in harm's way, they are caused to be in a dangerous situation. These men were never told how they'd been put in harm's way... PHRASE: PHR after v, v-link PHR 9. If someone or something is out of harm's way, they are in a safe place away from danger or from the possibility of being damaged. For parents, it is an easy way of keeping their children entertained, or simply out of harm's way... PHRASE: v-link PHR, PHR after v

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

I. n. 1. Injury, hurt, detriment, mischief, damage, prejudice, disadvantage. 2. Evil, wrong, criminality, wickedness. II. v. a. 1. Injure, hurt, damage, do harm to. 2. Maltreat, molest, abuse, ill-use, ill-treat.

Moby Thesaurus

abomination, abuse, afflict, affliction, aggravate, aggrieve, atrocity, bad, badness, bane, banefulness, bankruptcy, befoul, befoulment, bewitch, blemish, blight, bother, breakage, breakdown, bugbear, burden, calamity, collapse, condemn, corrupt, corruption, crack-up, crippling, crucify, crushing burden, crying evil, curse, damage, death, defile, defilement, deleteriousness, deprave, despoil, despoliation, destroy, destruction, deteriorate, detriment, dilapidate, dilapidation, disablement, disaccommodate, disadvantage, discommode, disease, disoblige, disrepair, disserve, distress, do a mischief, do evil, do ill, do violence to, do wrong, do wrong by, doom, drawback, embitter, encroachment, endamage, envenom, evil, exacerbate, get into trouble, grievance, handicap, harass, havoc, hex, hobbling, hurt, hurting, ill, impair, impairment, impose upon, incapacitation, incommode, inconvenience, infect, infection, infliction, infringement, iniquity, injure, injury, inroad, irritate, jinx, liability, loss, loss of ground, maiming, make worse, maltreat, mar, mayhem, menace, mischance, mischief, misfortune, mistreat, misuse, molest, mutilation, nemesis, noxiousness, open wound, outrage, perniciousness, persecute, pest, pestilence, plague, play havoc with, play hob with, poison, pollute, pollution, prejudice, put back, put out, put to inconvenience, put to trouble, ruination, ruinousness, rum, running sore, sabotage, savage, scathe, scourge, sickening, spoil, spoiling, step backward, taint, tarnish, the worst, thorn, threaten, torment, torture, toxin, trouble, venom, vexation, violate, visitation, vitiate, weaken, weakening, wickedness, woe, worsen, wound, wreak havoc on, wrong, wrongdoing