Definition
In legal usage, "hurt" extends well beyond physical injury. As employed in legal phrases such as "to the hurt or annoyance of another" or "hurt, molested, or restrained in his person or estate," the term encompasses:
1. Physical injury or bodily harm to a person.
2. Mental pain, emotional suffering, or psychological distress.
3. Discomfort, annoyance, or interference with a person's enjoyment of rights, person, or estate.
The term is deliberately broad when it appears in these formulations, serving as a catch-all for any cognizable harm—personal, emotional, or proprietary—rather than being confined to visible or measurable bodily damage.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A roundel azure — a blue circular spot used in heraldry. Also, in general modern English, to cause pain or injury, or to feel pain.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A band on a trip-hammer helve bearing the trunnions; also a husk.
The gap here is notable in a narrow but important way: the ordinary English word "hurt" carries intuitive connotations of physical pain, and a researcher reading a historical legal instrument may instinctively apply that physical limitation. Legal usage explicitly rejects this limitation. In legal phrases invoking hurt alongside terms like "molested" or "restrained," courts have consistently read the word to reach non-physical harms including mental distress and mere annoyance—a broader ambit than everyday speech suggests.
Common Confusion
"Hurt" is sometimes treated as interchangeable with "injury," "damage," or "harm" in legal texts, but the terms carry distinct technical weight in different contexts. "Injury" often has a more precise procedural or compensatory meaning (as in actionable injury or legal injury). "Damage" typically refers to the measurable monetary loss flowing from harm. "Hurt," as used in the relevant legal phrases, is an umbrella concept focused on the experience of suffering or interference—physical, mental, or proprietary—without regard to whether it is quantifiable or actionable as a standalone claim. Researchers should not assume that "hurt" in a historical document signals a cause of action, only that some form of adverse impact on person or estate is being described.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary research risk with "hurt" is underreading it. A researcher scanning historical pleadings, equity petitions, or statutory language may encounter "hurt" and mentally substitute "bodily injury," missing the full scope of the claim or protection at issue. Courts interpreting phrases like "hurt, molested, or restrained" have applied the term to mental suffering and discomfort—categories that, in other doctrinal contexts, required separate legal development to achieve recognition.
For corpus researchers working in 19th-century New York materials or Massachusetts equity records, this is especially significant: the cases cited in Black's 2nd Edition arise from that period and those jurisdictions, reflecting a judicial willingness to read "hurt" expansively in contexts involving personal liberty and estate interference. This expansion prefigures later doctrinal developments in emotional distress and dignitary harm.
When indexing or searching historical sources, researchers should treat "hurt" as a proximity indicator for broader harm vocabularies—look also for "annoyance," "molestation," "restraint," and "discomfort" appearing in the same clause. These co-occurring terms signal that the drafter was invoking a comprehensive harm formulation rather than a narrow physical-injury standard.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) is the sole shelf source for this entry. Its treatment is brief but pointed: it explicitly rejects a physical-injury-only reading and anchors that rejection in contemporary case authority. The entry functions less as a definition and more as a judicial gloss—a warning to readers that the word's apparent simplicity is deceptive.
What the historical dictionaries do not do is trace the doctrinal lineage of this expansive reading or explain when courts first began applying it. Earlier legal dictionaries (Bouvier, Tomlin) do not appear to offer a developed entry for "hurt" as a term of art, suggesting that its legal significance was understood contextually rather than as a freestanding doctrine. The Black's entry essentially captures a working judicial construction rather than a formally codified definition.
Jurisdictional Note
The cases cited in Black's 2nd Edition are drawn from New York and Massachusetts, and the broad reading of "hurt" to include mental pain and annoyance reflects those courts' equity-influenced traditions. Researchers working in other jurisdictions should not assume identical treatment; the expansiveness of the term in a given document will depend on local judicial construction of the specific phrase in which it appears.