maim
Americanverb (used with object)
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maims,
present (3rd person singular)
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maimed,
past participle, past
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maiming
present participle
noun
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a physical injury, especially a loss of a limb.
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an injury or defect; blemish; lack.
verb
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to mutilate, cripple, or disable a part of the body of (a person or animal)
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to make defective
noun
Synonym Usage
Maim, lacerate, mangle, mutilate indicate the infliction of painful and severe injuries on the body. To maim is to injure by giving a disabling wound, or by depriving a person of one or more members or their use: maimed in an accident. To lacerate is to inflict severe cuts and tears on the flesh or skin: to lacerate an arm. To mangle is to chop undiscriminatingly or to crush or rend by blows or pressure, as if by machinery: bodies mangled in a train wreck. To mutilate is to injure the completeness or beauty of a body, especially by cutting off an important member: to mutilate a statue, a tree, a person.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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maimsimple
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maimssimple
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have maimedperfect
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has maimedperfect
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am maimingprogressive
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are maimingprogressive
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is maimingprogressive
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have been maimingperfect progressive
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has been maimingperfect progressive
Past
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maimedsimple
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had maimedperfect
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was maimingprogressive
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were maimingprogressive
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had been maimingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of maim
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English mayme, variant of mahayme mayhem
Explanation
To maim something is to disfigure it through force or violence. Wartime battles have a tendency to maim soldiers. The verb maim is related to mayhem, which, historically, was the act of hurting another person so badly that they couldn’t defend themselves. To maim a person or animal, even if it’s an accident, is to render them defenseless or disfigured, and it frequently includes the loss of a limb. The goal of driving defensively is to avoid an accident that could maim you, your passengers, or other people on the road.
Vocabulary lists containing maim
A Long Way Gone
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"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "M"
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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.
See Examples For:
One legacy we don’t hear anything about in Turning Point is how the war continues to kill, maim, and sicken the Vietnamese people.
From Slate ● Apr. 30, 2025
I love this quote by Ntozake Shange: “i cant count the number of times i have viscerally wanted to attack deform n maim the language that i was taught to hate myself in.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2025
Only the owner of a carrier or racing pigeon can injure, kill, maim, trap or detain their bird.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 21, 2023
The only way for a medical professional to declaw a cat, after all, is to permanently maim the animal's paws.
From Salon ● Dec. 13, 2022
Objection 1: It would seem that in no case can it be lawful to maim anyone.
From Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province by Saint Thomas Aquinas
No matter what happens to them — no matter how the world paints them, vilifies them, maims them — they were here, and at least for a moment, they owned their own lives.
From New York Times ● Nov. 21, 2019
Agnieszka is a simple village girl who is gifted to her local wizard, The Dragon, as payment for thwarting the advance of the ominous Wood, which kills or maims any who enter it.
From The Guardian ● May 21, 2019
It’s a pervasive scourge that damages all of us, that directly maims the lives of women and leaves us all in chains.
From Salon ● May 16, 2016
Although it maims its victims, brucellosis seldom kills them.
From Time Magazine Archive
“Oh, defend us from death and horrible maims,** he is reported to have said, “for I see well we be in great peril of death.”
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
She’d begun painting only months earlier, after being injured in a traffic accident that maimed her for life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 1, 2026
But many other protesters — understandably aroused by videos of starving, maimed, or dying Gazan children — aren’t thinking that far ahead.
From Seattle Times ● May 6, 2024
Imagine a statement that shows empathy not only for kidnapped civilians but also for those killed, maimed, made homeless.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 17, 2024
Many more are maimed by the venom’s muscle-destroying toxins, as existing treatments are largely ineffective at preventing tissue death.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 16, 2024
Rekh was an unimpressive figure, similar in build and feature to a hundred other men, with a suggestion of paunch and a foot maimed long ago by spilled molten metal.
From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Primarily affecting children, polio wrecked havoc in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, killing and maiming scores of children.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
Yes, SARS-2 is still spreading and maiming people today, but widespread immunity from past infections and vaccines has made the virus much less deadly.
From Salon ● May 11, 2026
Why, then, did Mullin so freely refuse to apologize to the Republican committee chairman for joking about his maiming?
From Slate ● Mar. 18, 2026
Navy has faced, maiming more ships than any other means of attack since World War II, according to a U.S.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 12, 2026
“Most people are going to have a hard enough time accepting that we’re not monsters, without reports about us maiming innocent people,” Clancy said.
From "The Darkest Minds" by Alexandra Bracken
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.
