- wound
- wound n Wound, trauma, traumatism, lesion, bruise, contusion are comparable when they mean an injury to one of the organs or parts of the body.Wound generally denotes an injury that is inflicted by a hard or sharp instrument (as a knife, a bullet, or a club)forcibly driven or applied, and is characterized by breaking of the skin or mucous membrane and usually by damage to the tissues beneath{
deep wounds made by a bayonet
}{a bite wound is likely to become infected
}In extended use wound can apply to a figurative hurt or blow (as to the mind or to society)inflicts wounds upon the human spirit which no surgery can heal— Woolf{the perfect way to heal many of the world's worst wounds— Mazur
}Trauma basically applies to a wound or other injury (as a strain, fracture, or concussion) resulting from external force or violence (as from a fall, a blow, a shot, a stab, or a burn) or from a cause incidental to birth or surgery. Often the term is extended to a mental or emotional blow or stress that results in disordered feelings or behavior or leaves a lasting abnormal impression on the mind{hysteria is a condition that often results from a psychic trauma
}{great social traumas like the French Revolution and the American Civil War— Heard
}{what psychologists call a trauma, a shock whose increasing aftereffects . . . testified to the susceptibility of the saint to sin— Thomas Mann
}In this connection trauma tends to pass in meaning from the injury received to the effect it produces{the disillusion of the older generation had become the spiritual trauma of the younger— Aldridge
}{a postwar boom that got us over the physical trauma of the 1930's— Galantière
}Traumatism in general use is seldom clearly distinguished from trauma{the traumatisms of history with time . . . become embedded in the culture of a people— Edmond Taylor
}but in technical use it tends to be applied specifically to the local or general disordered state that results from injury or wounding{fractures, sprains . . . burns and similar traumatisms— JAMA
}Lesion basically implies an injury or impairment{the severe control... is no lesion to inward harmony and happiness— Muirhead
}but in medical use it applies spe-cifically to a usually clearly circumscribed pathological change in tissue that may be caused by a wound or injury or be symptomatic of a disease or degenerative process{tuberculous lesions in the lung
}{syphilitic lesions
}{a traumatic lesion
}In much of its general use lesion is an extension of the medical sense and implies a damaged or defective point or a weak spot{a comic example of the lesions in Shakespeare studies— Margery Bailey
}{crime has . . . become the symptom of a radical lesion in the stamina of humanity— Zabel
}Bruise is the general and contusion the more technical term for an injury, ordinarily due to impact, that results in more or less disorganization of tissues beneath the skin without breaking it but with black and blue discoloration due to oozing of blood into the tissues{his letter talks of a disjointed thumb, a contusion on the hip, and a sightless eye— Lucas
}Only bruise has appreciable extended use and in this it tends to be strictly metaphoric{the social and economic bruises that have come from our violence to nature— Sears
}{all sensitiveness, at bottom is an intimation of pain and of fear ... a shrinking from the bruise, and an awareness of transitoriness— Behrman
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
