hemorrhage

American  

[hem-er-ij, hem-rij] / ˈhɛm ər ɪdʒ, ˈhɛm rɪdʒ /

noun

• hemorrhages
  plural

1. a profuse discharge of blood, as from a ruptured blood vessel; bleeding.

2. the loss of assets, especially in large amounts.

3. any widespread or uncontrolled loss or diffusion.

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verb (used without object)

hemorrhaged, hemorrhaging

1. to bleed profusely.

2. to lose assets, especially in large amounts.

verb (used with object)

hemorrhaged, hemorrhaging

1. to lose (assets).

   a company that was hemorrhaging money.

hemorrhage Scientific  

/ hĕm′ər-ĭj /

1. Excessive or uncontrollable bleeding, often caused by trauma, surgical or obstetrical complications, or the advanced stages of certain illnesses, such as cirrhosis and peptic ulcer disease.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• hemorrhagic
  adjective
• posthemorrhagic
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• hemorrhages
  plural

Etymology

Origin of hemorrhage

1665–75; < Latin haemorrhagia < Greek haimorrhagía. See hemo-, -rrhagia

Explanation

Medically speaking, a hemorrhage is a rapid loss of blood. If you fall and hit your head really hard, the doctors will check to see there's no cerebral hemorrhage, or bleeding in your brain. Hemorrhage is pronounced HEM-or-edge. Blame the Greeks for the funny spelling, because like many medical terms, this one comes from Greek roots. Besides the medical meaning, we use hemorrhage to mean the uncontrollable loss of other things. If sudden disaster is making you hemorrhage money, you'll have to cut back on fancy dinners and new shoes. Can I recommend frozen pizza?

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hemorrhage hemorrhages hemorrhaged hemorrhaging

In March 2024, 16-year-old Shaylee Mejia died after she suffered a brain hemorrhage.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 11, 2026

The researchers also found strong evidence that daily aspirin increases the risk of serious extracranial hemorrhage and likely raises the risk of hemorrhagic stroke.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 4, 2026

French reports said that Macron appeared to have a sub-conjunctival hemorrhage, which is a broken blood vessel in his eye.

From BBC ● Jan. 20, 2026

Doctors found that he had suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage resulting from a ruptured brain aneurysm.

From Slate ● Dec. 8, 2025

Her eighth child, Leopold, had inherited the gene and died of a brain hemorrhage at age thirty.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Monoclonal antibodies that are indicated for the early treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, for example, have a risk of brain hemorrhages and bleeds.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 10, 2026

My left eye suffers hemorrhages that can cause episodes of total blindness.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2024

Then there’s the tendency to conflate concussions, which are considered mild traumatic brain injuries, with more severe conditions, like penetrating head injuries or brain hemorrhages.

From Slate ● Mar. 17, 2024

She helps singers dealing with polyps, nodules, hemorrhages, cysts, acid reflux, vocal fold swelling.

From New York Times ● Feb. 7, 2024

The skin develops red spots, called petechiae, which are hemorrhages under the skin.

From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston

But as this upstart took on the PGA Tour, LIV struggled to gain a commercial foothold and hemorrhaged money after teeing off in 2022.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026

The early days were rife with failure and the operation hemorrhaged money.

From Barron's ● May 20, 2026

The company has secured prime rights for major leagues and competitions across Europe and beyond, though it has hemorrhaged considerable amounts of cash along the way.

From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2024

I started my career at local newspapers, which hemorrhaged revenue as advertising moved online.

From Slate ● Dec. 3, 2023

They had both hemorrhaged badly, and blood plasma was in short supply our needs being low on the wartime priority list.

From "Farewell to Manzanar" by Jeanne Houston

Furthermore, Apple’s focus on hardware would have made good business sense even if the frontier AI labs weren’t hemorrhaging cash, and even if those labs had found lots of profitable commercial applications for their models.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 2, 2026

The tax — a half-penny of every dollar spent in the county — is meant to prop up local hospitals and clinics that are hemorrhaging funding after recent federal cuts.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2026

Spirit had been hemorrhaging the cash it needed to escape bankruptcy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026

Misoprostol has been available by prescription for decades as a treatment for stomach ulcers and to manage postpartum hemorrhaging.

From BBC ● May 1, 2026

But eventually I started to see why the business was hemorrhaging money.

From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah

Related Words

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