from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Wound \Wound\ (?; 277), n. [OE. wounde, wunde, AS. wund; akin to
OFries. wunde, OS. wunda, D. wonde, OHG. wunta, G. wunde,
Icel. und, and to AS., OS., & G. wund sore, wounded, OHG.
wunt, Goth. wunds, and perhaps also to Goth. winnan to
suffer, E. win. [root]140. Cf. Zounds.]
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1. A hurt or injury caused by violence; specifically, a
breach of the skin and flesh of an animal, or in the
substance of any creature or living thing; a cut, stab,
rent, or the like. --Chaucer.
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Showers of blood
Rained from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen.
--Shak.
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2. Fig.: An injury, hurt, damage, detriment, or the like, to
feeling, faculty, reputation, etc.
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3. (Criminal Law) An injury to the person by which the skin
is divided, or its continuity broken; a lesion of the
body, involving some solution of continuity.
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Note: Walker condemns the pronunciation woond as a
"capricious novelty." It is certainly opposed to an
important principle of our language, namely, that the
Old English long sound written ou, and pronounced like
French ou or modern English oo, has regularly changed,
when accented, into the diphthongal sound usually
written with the same letters ou in modern English, as
in ground, hound, round, sound. The use of ou in Old
English to represent the sound of modern English oo was
borrowed from the French, and replaced the older and
Anglo-Saxon spelling with u. It makes no difference
whether the word was taken from the French or not,
provided it is old enough in English to have suffered
this change to what is now the common sound of ou; but
words taken from the French at a later time, or
influenced by French, may have the French sound.
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{Wound gall} (Zool.), an elongated swollen or tuberous gall
on the branches of the grapevine, caused by a small
reddish brown weevil ({Ampeloglypter sesostris}) whose
larvae inhabit the galls.
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