victim
noun
Simple meaning
Something that is harmed—killed, injured, subjected to oppression, deceit, or otherwise adversely affected—by someone or something.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
viktuhmSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈvɪktəm
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
One that is harmed—killed, injured, subjected to oppression, deceit, or otherwise adversely affected—by someone or something, especially another person or event, force, or condition; in particular
One who is harmed or killed by a crime or scam.
One who is harmed or killed by an accident or illness.
One who is harmed or killed as a result of a natural or man-made disaster or impersonal condition.
One who is harmed or killed as a result of other people's biases, emotions or incompetence, or their own.
A living being which is slain and offered as a sacrifice, usually in a religious rite.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: One that is harmed—killed, injured, subjected to oppression, deceit, or otherwise adversely affected—by someone or something, especially another person or event, force, or condition; in particular
Used this way, victim is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It criticises, but without shouting.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Critical but measured
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use victim
- “The kind community helped the victim of the storm rebuild their house.”noun
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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.