Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Serious injury to the body, as from physical violence or an accident.
  • noun Severe emotional or mental distress caused by an experience.
  • noun An experience that causes severe anxiety or emotional distress, such as rape or combat.
  • noun An event or situation that causes great disruption or suffering.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An abnormal condition of the living body produced by external violence, as distinguished from that produced by poisons, zymotic infection, bad habits, and other less evident causes; traumatism; an accidental wound, as distinguished from one caused by the surgeon's knife in an operation.
  • noun External violence producing bodily injury; the act of wounding, or infliction of a wound.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any serious injury to the body, often resulting from violence or an accident.
  • noun An emotional wound leading to psychological injury.
  • noun An event that causes great distress.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an emotional wound or shock often having long-lasting effects
  • noun any physical damage to the body caused by violence or accident or fracture etc.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek; see terə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek τραῦμα (trauma, "wound, damage").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word trauma.

Examples

  • ; w; * trauma, trauma* mi casita se puso a saltar la cuerda! pero luego me di cuenta que no era solo mi casita it was todo el Peru que creo que le gusto demasiado Jump it * 0*

    crazydark Diary Entry crazydark 2007

  • As Danielle Gardner, whose brother Douglas Gardner worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and died in the World Trade Center, wrote in a remarkable essay published in 2005, I have learned about the whacked-out phenomenon I term trauma envy.

    The Truth About Grief Ruth Davis Konigsberg 2011

  • As Danielle Gardner, whose brother Douglas Gardner worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and died in the World Trade Center, wrote in a remarkable essay published in 2005, I have learned about the whacked-out phenomenon I term trauma envy.

    The Truth About Grief Ruth Davis Konigsberg 2011

  • "Summer is what we call trauma season," says Matthew Denenberg, division chief for pediatrics at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich.

    Summertime Fun in the Sun, and Other Perils 2010

  • As Carlson notes, this trauma is the work of literature itself: For [Shelley], the value of creative writing is in 'preparing' readers for the inability to be prepared.

    Introduction 2008

  • From the point of view of the subject, this trauma is a hole, a tear in the symbolic tissue.

    'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth 2001

  • Aleksei Petrov, one of the most striking and mysterious figures from Bulgaria's 20-year transition, walked into the court-room on crutches due to what he called a trauma from a 2002 assassination attempt.

    Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) 2010

  • Aleksei Petrov, one of the most striking and mysterious figures from Bulgaria's 20-year transition, walked into the court-room on crutches due to what he called a trauma from a 2002 assassination attempt.

    Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) 2010

  • Petrov walked into the court-room on crutches due to what he called a trauma from the time of the assassination attempt against him in 2002.

    Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) 2010

  • Petrov walked into the court-room on crutches due to what he called a trauma from the time of the assassination attempt against him in 2002.

    Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) 2010

  • Many of these terms do have early, important roots in psychotherapy – the word “triggered”, for example, was first used by psychologists as a way to describe those who were suffering from PTSD after the first world war, while the term “trauma-dumping” was widely popularised by psychotherapist Janina Fisher in her 2017 book Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors.

    Are Jonah Hill's texts really 'therapy speak'? I asked a therapist | Daisy Jones Daisy Jones 2023

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.