Harm

//hɑːm// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Physical injury; hurt; damage. countable, uncountable

    "No harm came to my possessions."

  2. 2
    the act of damaging something or someone wordnet
  3. 3
    Emotional or figurative hurt. countable, uncountable

    "Although not physically injured in the car accident, she received some psychological harm."

  4. 4
    the occurrence of a change for the worse wordnet
  5. 5
    Detriment; misfortune. countable, uncountable

    "I wish him no harm."

Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    any physical damage to the body caused by violence or accident or fracture etc.; the condition of an injury wordnet
  2. 7
    That which causes injury, damage, or loss. countable, uncountable

    "We, ignorant of ourselves, / Beg often our own harms."

Verb
  1. 1
    To damage, hurt, or injure something, usually an inanimate object.

    "Will justice and conscience of society not be harmed if people avoid the truth?"

  2. 2
    cause or do harm to wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
damageinjurydetrimentinjuremischiefscathe

Example

More examples

"Smoking will do more harm than good."

Etymology

From Middle English harm, herm, from Old English hearm, from Proto-West Germanic *harm, from Proto-Germanic *harmaz (“harm; shame; pain”). Cognate with Dutch harm (“harm”), German Harm (“harm”), Danish harme (“indignation, resentment”), Icelandic harmur (“sorrow, grief”), Swedish harm (“anger, indignation, harm”).

Related phrases

actual bodily harmdo more harm than gooddo no harmgrievous bodily harmharm a flyharm a hair on someone's headharm principleharm reductionharm's wayno harm donenumber needed to harmrepeated bodily harm

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.