offend
Formsoffends, offending, offended
- 1To hurt someone's feelings, displease them, make them angry, or insult them.
Her blunt comments offended the committee chair.
Politicians often offend voters when they dodge direct questions.
Similarupset, insult, hurt, displease
Note
The word began as a blow. It comes from Middle French offendre, from Latin offendō, built from ob- 'against' and a root meaning 'strike', and its Latin meanings ran to 'blunder' and 'commit an offense'. Hurting someone's feelings is the figurative descendant of knocking against them. It takes a direct object, the person or their feelings, and pairs readily with deeply, as in offend me deeply.
- 2To feel or become offended; to take insult at something said or done.
She offends at the smallest hint of criticism.
Thin-skinned readers offend the moment their views are challenged.
Note
Here the verb turns intransitive, and the person who feels insulted becomes the subject: I don't offend easily. It sits most comfortably with easily and in the negative. Outside that pattern, the passive of the hurt-feelings meaning usually does the same work more idiomatically: say she is easily offended rather than she offends easily.
- 3
- 4To go against what a law or moral principle requires.
The ruling offended long-established principles of justice.
Policies that offend constitutional limits rarely survive court review.
Similarviolate, breach, contravene
Note
Rules and laws are often offended against rather than offended outright: wearing the wrong clothes offends against a club's rules of dress. Use against when the subject is an act or behavior breaking a code. Use a direct object when the thing violated is a principle or a limit. Of all the senses, this one sits nearest the Latin meaning 'commit an offense'.
- 5To sin; to act against divine law or moral rules.
She believed she had offended and sought absolution.
Sinners who offend repeatedly drift further from grace.
Similarsin, transgress, err
- 6To physically harm or cause pain to a person or body part.
The surgeon warned that bright sunlight would offend her eyes for a week after the operation.
Stiff new boots offended his heels until blisters rose on both of them.
Note
Of all the senses, this one stays closest to the Latin 'strike' behind the word. What offends here is a physical assault on the body, and the classic case is strong light and the eye. Thomas Wyatt writes of birds that 'the light doeth theim offend', so they appear only in the dark. Keep the word for sensations that genuinely hurt. Mere unpleasantness belongs to the annoyance meaning.
Less common meaning
- 7To cause someone to stumble, or to lead them into sin or moral failure.
"If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out."
1611, The Holy Bible, King James VersionNote
The King James Bible of 1611 gives the best-known line: 'If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.' The eye does not displease its owner; it trips him into sin. Adolphus Frederick Schauffler, in 1896, glosses offend as 'stumbles not, is not tripped up'. Read older scripture with this obsolete sense in mind, or the hurt-feelings meaning will mislead you.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle French "offendre," from Latin "offendo" ("strike, blunder, commit an offense"), which was formed from "ob-" ("against") plus "fendo" ("strike").