wounded

1. 1
   adjective

   Having a wound, particularly one inflicted by a gun, knife, or other weapon in battle.

   Medics treated dozens of wounded civilians after the blast tore through the market.

   Two wounded officers were rushed into surgery before midnight.

   Similarinjured, hurt

   Oppositeunhurt, uninjured, unharmed, unscathed

   Note

   The battlefield sense is also the one that most easily becomes a noun. After the, it stands for injured people as a group: the wounded lay on stretchers. In hospital and war reporting it can even drop the article, as when hospitals take in wounded from the front. Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island shows the participle beside it, with a bandaged man who had recently been wounded.

   The wounded lay on stretchers waiting for surgery.

   Every single hospital was taking in wounded from the front.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of wound.

   A stray bullet wounded a bystander during the robbery.

   Several protesters were wounded when the police charged the crowd.

   Note

   A regular past form, built on the injury verb and serving both of its meanings: skin cut or pierced, and feelings hurt. It also keeps two words apart. Wound is itself the past of wind, as in a clock wound tight, but that wound never takes -ed. Wherever the -ed appears, the meaning is injury, whether active (he wounded the monkey) or passive (several were wounded).

3. 3
   adjectivefiguratively

   Suffering from an emotional injury; hurt in one's feelings rather than in the body.

   Like a scar left on the heart instead of the skin.

   His wounded pride kept him from apologizing for weeks.

   There was a wounded tone in her voice as she read the letter aloud.

   Similarhurt, injured, bruised, aggrieved, offended

4. 4
   adjective

   Describing a particle that has undergone an inelastic collision, losing some of its energy in the process.

   The model predicts how many wounded nucleons form in each heavy-ion collision.

   Each wounded proton carried noticeably less energy than it had before impact.

   Note

   Particle physics borrows the image of the battlefield sense for a collision that leaves a mark. In an elastic collision, a particle bounces away with its motion intact. A wounded particle has given up part of its kinetic energy to internal excitation, radiation or newly produced particles. The usual phrase is wounded nucleon, meaning a proton or neutron that has taken such a hit.

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