damaged

1. 1
   adjective

   Harmed or impaired by force, accident, or wear, so it is no longer whole or fully working.

   The flood left dozens of damaged homes along the riverbank.

   Inspectors flagged the bridge as structurally damaged after the earthquake.

   Similarbroken, impaired, ruined, unsound

   Oppositeundamaged, intact, sound, whole

   Note

   A participle that has settled into a true adjective, and the sign is that it grades: more damaged, most damaged. Placed before a noun it names a lasting state, as with the damaged stations awaiting rebuilding in E. J. Tyler's "Post-War Recovery on the Netherlands Railways" (1951). Add by and a cause (damaged by the flood) and it leans back toward the verb's passive.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of damage.

   The fire damaged the upper floors before crews arrived.

   Years of neglect damaged the old manuscript beyond repair.

   Note

   One spelling serves both the simple past and the participle, so "the fire damaged the roof" and "the roof was damaged" share a form. The verb is almost always transitive. The older intransitive use, meaning to take damage oneself, is obsolete. Retail adds a trade use: a clerk who has damaged a torn box has pulled it from the sales floor for processing, not broken it.

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