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Scathe
Definitions
- 1 Damage, harm, hurt, injury. British, archaic, countable, dialectal, uncountable
"Therefore great Lords bee as your titles vvitnes, / Imperious, and impatient of your vvrongs, / And vvherein Rome hath done you any ſkath, / Let him make treable ſatisfaction."
- 2 the act of damaging something or someone wordnet
- 3 Someone who, or something which, causes harm; an injurer. British, archaic, countable, dialectal
"The pride I trampled is now my scathe, / For it tramples me again."
- 4 An injury or loss for which compensation is sought in a lawsuit; damage; also, expenses incurred by a claimant; costs. British, archaic, countable, dialectal, obsolete
- 5 Something to be mourned or regretted. British, archaic, dialectal, uncountable
"They deemed it little scathe indeed / That her coarse homespun ragged weed / Fell off from her round arms and lithe / Laid on the door-post, that a withe / Of willows was her only belt; / And each as he gazed at her felt / As some gift had been given him."
- 1 To harm or injure (someone or something) physically. British, Scotland, archaic, dialectal, transitive
"This trick may chance to ſcath you I knovv vvhat, / You muſt contrarie me, […]"
- 2 To harm or injure (someone or something) physically.; To cause monetary loss to (someone). British, Scotland, archaic, dialectal, obsolete, specifically, transitive
"VVell goe too vvild oates, ſpend thrift, prodigall, / Ile croſſe thy name quite from my reckoning booke: / For theſe accounts, faith it ſhall skathe thee ſomevvhat, / I vvill not ſay vvhat ſomevvhat it ſhall be."
- 3 To harm, injure, or destroy (someone or something) by fire, lightning, or some other heat source; to blast; to scorch; to wither. British, archaic, broadly, dialectal, literary, poetic, transitive
"The shout was hushed on lake and fell, / The Monk resumed his muttered spell. / Dismal and low its accents came, / The while he scathed the Cross with flame; […]"
- 4 To severely hurt (someone's feelings, soul, etc., or something intangible) through acts, words spoken, etc. British, archaic, dialectal, figuratively, transitive
"There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul—that penetrate to the vital seat of happiness—and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom."
Etymology
From Middle English scath, scathe [and other forms], from Old Norse skaði (“damage, harm; loss; death; murder”), from Proto-Germanic *skaþô (“damage, scathe; one who causes damage, injurer”, noun) (whence Old English sċeaþa, sċeaþu (“scathe, harm, injury”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keh₁t- (“damage, harm”). Cognate with German Schaden (“damage, harm”). cognates * Scots skaith * Dutch schade * German schaden * Norwegian skade * Swedish skada * Icelandic skaði * Polish szkoda * Russian шко́да (škóda) * Belarusian шко́дa (škóda) * Ukrainian шко́да (škóda)
From Middle English scathen, skathen (“to harm; to cause loss; to assail, attack; to make war on; to defeat”) [and other forms], from Old Norse skaða (“to damage, harm; to hurt, injure”), from Proto-Germanic *skaþōną (“to damage, harm; to injure”) (whence Old English sceaþian, scaþian (“to harm, hurt, injure, scathe”)), from *skaþô (“damage, scathe; one who causes damage, injurer”, noun); see further at etymology 1. Sense 2 (“to harm, injure, or destroy (someone or something) by fire, lightning, or some other heat source”) appears to derive from Paradise Lost by the English poet John Milton (1608–1674), perhaps influenced by scorch: see the 1667 quotation. Cognates * Albanian shkathët (“adept, clever, skilful”) * Danish skade (“to hurt, injure”) * Dutch schaden (“to injure”) * Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌸𐌾𐌰𐌽 (skaþjan, “to harm, injure; to do wrong”) * Ancient Greek ἀσκηθής (askēthḗs, “unhurt”) * Old Frisian skathia (“to injure”) * Old High German skadôn (Middle High German schaden, German schaden (“to damage, harm, hurt; to be harmful”)) * Old Norse skeðja (“to hurt”) * Old Saxon scaðon (“to slander”) * Swedish skada (“to hurt, injure”)
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