- injustice
- injustice, injury, wrong, grievance are comparable when they denote an act that inflicts undeserved damage, loss, or hardship on a person.Injustice is the general term applicable not only to an act which involves unfairness to another or a violation of his rights{
class privileges which make injustices easy—Spencer
}{the injustices that angered him were never quite genuine— Mailer
}but, as a collective noun, to all acts which come under this description{he flamed out against injustice because he was a lover of justice— Perry
}{the appropriate attitude toward prejudice and injustice and cruelty is indignation— Hicks
}Injury applies to an injustice to a person for which the law allows an action to recover compensation or specific property, or both{every person who suffers damage to his person, his property, or his reputation as a result of an infringement of the law suffers a legal injury— Rubinstein
}Wrong is, in law, a more general term than injury for it applies not only to all injuries as just defined (private wrongs) but to all misdemeanors or crimes which affect the community (public wrongs) and which are punishable according to the criminal code. But in general use wrong differs little from injustice, except in carrying a stronger connotation of flagrancy or of seriousness{we are . . . steel to the very back, yet wrung with wrongs more than our backs can bear— Shak.
}{so many were th£"wrongs that were to be righted, the grievances to be redressed— Muggeridge
}Grievance applies to a circumstance or condition that, in the opinion of those affected, constitutes a wrong or that gives one just grounds for complaint{they sent to the king a statement of their grievances— Keightley
}{in an early state of society any kind of taxation is apt to be looked on as a grievance— Freeman
}Analogous words: damage, hurt, harm, mischief, *injury: infringement, trespass, transgression, violation, infraction, *breach: unfairness, inequitableness (see affirmative adjectives at FAIR)Contrasted words: "Justice, equity
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.