casualty
Americannoun
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Military.
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a member of the armed forces lost to service through death, wounds, sickness, capture, or because their whereabouts or condition cannot be determined.
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casualties, loss in numerical strength through any cause, as death, wounds, sickness, capture, or desertion.
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one who is injured or killed in an accident.
There were no casualties in the traffic accident.
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any person, group, thing, etc., that is harmed or destroyed as a result of some act or event.
Their house was a casualty of the fire.
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a serious accident, especially one involving bodily injury or death.
noun
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a serviceman who is killed, wounded, captured, or missing as a result of enemy action
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a person who is injured or killed in an accident
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a hospital department in which victims of accidents, violence, etc, are treated
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anything that is lost, damaged, or destroyed as the result of an accident, etc
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of casualty
First recorded in 1375–1425; casual + -ty 2; replacing late Middle English casuelte, equivalent to casuel ( casual ) + -te -ty 2
Explanation
In wartime, you'll hear the word casualty used often for someone killed or injured. But casualty can also refer to deaths or injuries suffered in an accident or some other unfortunate event. The term "casualties of war" has been around for a while and refers to the ugly downside of military victory. Anyone who loses life or limb, either in the fighting or as a civilian, is called a casualty. You can also use this word figuratively: if a local elementary school loses funding for their art classes and after-school activities, you can say that the students are casualties of budget cuts.
Vocabulary lists containing casualty
The Things They Carried
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The American Civil War
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A Long Way Gone
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"Our findings significantly shift tubulin's role in neurodegeneration, from a passive casualty of disease to an active protector against toxic protein aggregation," Ferreon said.
From Science Daily • Jun. 21, 2026
It said during a search of the area, BTP was called at about 09:40 BST to a casualty on the track near Welwyn North railway station.
From BBC • May 28, 2026
"The attacker was signalling vulnerability without necessarily crossing the threshold into mass casualty or nuclear safety crisis."
From Barron's • May 18, 2026
Spirit’s permanent grounding on May 2 made it the highest-profile airline casualty in decades—and set off a dash as rival carriers and airports look to fill the void it left behind.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 17, 2026
Bugloss was as good as a casualty: he would never hold rank again.
From "Watership Down: A Novel" by Richard Adams
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
