casualty
noun
Simple meaning
A person suffering from injuries or who has been killed due to an accident or through an act of violence.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kazhuhwuhlteeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈkæʒəwəlti
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A person suffering from injuries or who has been killed due to an accident or through an act of violence.
military
A person in military service who becomes unavailable for duty, for any reason (notably death, injury, illness, capture, or desertion).
Something that happens by chance, especially an unfortunate event; an accident, a disaster.
Someone or something adversely affected by a decision, event or situation.
An incidental charge or payment.
britishalso casualty ward
The department of a hospital providing immediate treatment for emergency cases.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A person suffering from injuries or who has been killed due to an accident or through an act of violence.
Used this way, casualty is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It comes across as direct, sometimes bluntly so.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Blunt and forceful
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use casualty
- “Fortunately, there was only one minor casualty in the small car accident.”
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An agency in the Department of Defense that is a national center for research on all aspects of injury control and casualty care.
Loss of military equipment in battle.
Loss of military equipment.
Loss of military equipment in field operations.
Military personnel lost by death or capture.
A natural and unavoidable catastrophe that interrupts the expected course of events.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.