casualty
Americannoun
plural
casualties-
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
Etymology
Origin of casualty
First recorded in 1375–1425; casual + -ty 2; replacing late Middle English casuelte, equivalent to casuel ( casual ) + -te -ty 2
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.
Media restrictions and limited access in Gaza have meant that AFP has been unable to independently verify casualty figures or freely cover all the violence.
From Barron's
But he’ll need a new moniker as Tesla does away with its Model S and Model X vehicles, which have become casualties of Musk’s artificial-intelligence goals.
From MarketWatch
It is not clear what caused the blasts, or if there were any casualties.
From BBC
When we pointed out the labor contract’s job casualties last fall, Mr. O’Brien accused us in a letter of attacking him “by name to distract from the Teamsters’ success of reining in corporate greed.”
Taking this route wasn’t easy—there were setbacks, defeats and casualties.
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.
