trauma
- 1An emotional wound that produces lasting psychological injury.
Like a scar that forms on the inside, quietly shaping how someone reacts long after the wound itself.
The therapist specializes in helping survivors recover from severe emotional trauma.
Untreated trauma can shape a person's relationships for decades.
Similardistress, anguish, suffering
Note
Here the wound has moved from the body to the mind. It is the same Greek image as the physical injury, turned inward. When someone inflicts it, the usual construction is trauma to a person, as in the trauma to a former friend. It also counts easily: childhood traumas are separate wounds, each leaving its own lingering feelings and behaviors.
- 2Severe physical injury of any kind, such as a wound, burn, or fracture, frequently resulting from accidents or violence.
The emergency team treated patients with blunt trauma from the highway pileup.
Penetrating trauma to the abdomen requires immediate surgical assessment.
Note
The physical sense is the closest to the Greek original, where traûma meant simply "wound, damage." In medical writing it is often uncountable (repeated trauma, blunt trauma) and names injury as a category rather than a single wound. Its adjective carries it into clinical terms like chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and clinicians may call the same thing an insult. The plural is traumas, though traumata keeps the Greek ending.
- 3
Practice
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Origin
From Ancient Greek τραῦμα (traûma), meaning "wound" or "damage."