hemorrhage
Americannoun
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hemorrhages
plural
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a profuse discharge of blood, as from a ruptured blood vessel; bleeding.
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the loss of assets, especially in large amounts.
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any widespread or uncontrolled loss or diffusion.
verb (used without object)
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to bleed profusely.
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to lose assets, especially in large amounts.
verb (used with object)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
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?
Vocabulary lists containing hemorrhage
The Catcher in the Rye
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Maus I: My Father Bleeds History
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "H"
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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:
Money continues to hemorrhage, as does the roster of big-name golfers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 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
She was rushed to a hospital in Malta's capital, Valletta, and after ruling out meningitis or a brain hemorrhage, doctors began to suspect she might have a very rare condition known as a CSF leak.
From BBC ● Dec. 27, 2025
But had her hemorrhage happened on the day of the hurricane, she may have bled to death.
From Slate ● Oct. 21, 2025
Katie had such a fit of giggling that she was afraid she’d bring on a hemorrhage.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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
Fluffy white clouds and red hemorrhages, the work of cytomegalovirus, bloomed across patients’ retinas until they went blind.
From Slate ● Jan. 31, 2025
My left eye suffers hemorrhages that can cause episodes of total blindness.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 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
As the Times story and a recent report in the Wall Street Journal make clear, Martin is also hemorrhaging the party’s confidence and loyalty.
From Salon ● Jul. 26, 2026
Not every denomination is hemorrhaging, but they’re all bleeding.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
The court documents claim that the former chef suffered severe hemorrhaging again on Feb. 8 and collapsed in her bathroom.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
First, Mr. Kleiman, our merry sunshine, had another bout of gastrointestinal hemorrhaging yesterday and will have to stay in bed for at least three weeks.
From "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank
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.
