casualty
Pluralcasualties
- 1A person who has been injured or killed as a result of an accident or an act of violence.
Paramedics treated each casualty at the scene before the ambulances arrived.
Both casualties were taken to the nearest hospital after the crash.
Similarvictim
- 2A person who has been killed (not merely injured) as a result of an accident or an act of violence; a fatality.
Of the forty passengers, the only casualty was the driver, who died on impact.
The report listed civilian casualties separately from those wounded in the bombing.
Similarfatality
Note
A narrowing that careful writers are warned against. Because casualty also covers the injured, as in the broader meaning, using it for the dead alone leaves readers unsure who survived. When you mean deaths, say fatalities, deaths or killed. When a figure mixes both, write killed and wounded so the number cannot be misread.
- 3A member of the armed forces who becomes unavailable for duty for any reason, such as death, injury, illness, capture, or desertion.
The battalion reported its first casualty when a soldier fell ill and was evacuated.
Commanders counted prisoners and deserters among their casualties, not just the wounded.
Similarloss
Note
A word for strength rather than suffering: a commander needs to know how many people can no longer serve, whatever the reason. A report of heavy casualties is therefore not a death toll, and the figure can rise without a shot being fired. Readers used to the everyday 'killed or injured' meaning should not assume every military casualty was hurt, still less that each one fits the strict 'killed' sense.
- 4Anyone or anything that suffers, or is lost or sacrificed, as a result of a particular decision, event, or situation.
Privacy has become a casualty of the constant push for more data.
Local libraries were among the casualties of the latest budget cuts.
Similarvictim
Note
The figurative stretch, where the victims are railway lines, products or institutions. In 1962 a Swiss branch line closed to traffic was counted "among recent casualties." Alice Rawsthorn, writing in The New York Times in 2012, called the pocket calculator "a casualty of digitization." The two frames do different work: casualty of names the cause, while among the casualties places one loss in a list.
- 5An event that happens by chance, especially an unfortunate one; an accident or disaster.
The fire was treated as an unforeseen casualty rather than anyone's fault.
Merchants insured their cargo against the many casualties of the open ocean.
Similaraccident, mishap, misfortune, disaster
Note
The sense nearest the word's roots: through casual and Late Latin cāsuālis, "happening by chance," back to Latin cāsus, "event," from cadere, "to fall." A casualty is what befalls you, and English case shares the root. Samuel Johnson still uses it this way in his 1756 life of Sir Thomas Browne. Modern readers expect the person hurt, so keep the mishap itself unmistakable.
- 6Clipping of casualty department.
After the accident, the ambulance took her straight to casualty.
He spent most of the night in casualty with a broken wrist.
Note
British shorthand for the hospital's casualty department, also called the casualty ward. It names the same place British speakers call A&E or accident and emergency. It is often used without an article, as in "taken to casualty" or "a night in casualty." American English names the place differently, calling it the emergency room or emergency department.
- 7
Less common meaning
- 8The quality of happening by chance; randomness.
Note
An abstract noun for chanciness itself, now obsolete. It is the quality behind the mishap meaning rather than any one event. In one old account of why some causes cannot be reduced to an art, it stands beside uncertainty and multitude as a property of things. Today, write chance, randomness or contingency, because casualty will be read as an accident or a victim.
Practice
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Origin
From "casual," via Middle French "casuel" and Medieval Latin "casualitas" and Late Latin "casualis" ("happening by chance"), from Latin "casus" ("event"), itself from "cadere" ("to fall"). It originally meant "a chance event," but developed a negative sense as "an unfortunate event," especially the loss of a person.