hurt
Forms
- present (v1)
- hurt
- past (v2)
- hurt
- past participle (v3)
- hurt
- present participle
- hurting
- 3rd person singular
- hurts
- Comparative
- more hurt
- Superlative
- most hurt
- Plural
- hurts
Definitions
1.To cause (a person or animal) physical pain and/or injury.
- If anybody hurts my little brother, I will get upset.
- This injection might hurt a little. Your arm will be hurting you for a while.
2.To cause (somebody) emotional pain.
- He was deeply hurt he hadn’t been invited.
3.To be painful.
- Does your leg still hurt? / It is starting to feel better.
4.To damage, harm, impair, undermine, impede.
- This latest gaffe hurts the legislator’s reelection prospects still further.
- It wouldn't hurt to check the weather forecast and find out if it's going to rain.
- Copying and pasting identical portions of source code hurts maintainability, because the programmer has to keep all those copies synchronized.
1.Wounded, physically injured.
2.Feeling physical or emotional pain.
1.An emotional or psychological humiliation or bad experience.
2.A band on a trip hammer's helve, bearing the trunnions.
Frequency
Overall
Common· #898
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Common
- General reading & writing
- Common
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Uncommon
Related words
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English hurten, hirten, hertan (“to injure, scathe, knock together”), from Old Northern French hurter ("to ram into, strike, collide with"; > Modern French heurter), perhaps from Frankish *hūrt (“a battering ram”), cognate with Welsh hwrdd (“ram”) and Cornish hordh (“ram”). Compare Proto-Germanic *hrūtaną, *hreutaną (“to fall, beat”), from Proto-Indo-European *krew- (“to fall, beat, smash, strike, break”); however, the earliest instances of the verb in Middle English are as old as those found in Old French, which leads to the possibility that the Middle English word may instead be a reflex of an unrecorded Old English *hyrtan, which later merged with the Old French verb. Germanic cognates include Dutch horten (“to push against, strike”), Middle Low German hurten (“to run at, collide with”), Middle High German hurten (“to push, bump, attack, storm, invade”), Old Norse hrútr (“battering ram”).