WOUND

10 definitions found across Law Mind sources

WOUNDAuthored
The Law Mind • 986 words
Definition
In criminal law, an injury to the body that breaks or divides the skin. The legal definition of wound has historically been narrower in the criminal context than in medical or civil settings: under the English statutory framework that shaped early American doctrine, a wound required penetration of the whole skin — a mere separation of the outer layer (the cuticle or epidermis) was held insufficient. In legal medicine and broader civil contexts, the term is used more comprehensively to include any lesion of the body, encompassing cuts, bruises, contusions, fractures, dislocations, and burns — regardless of whether the skin is broken. The operative meaning therefore depends heavily on context: 1. Criminal law (narrow): An injury breaking the continuity of the whole skin. Bruising, fracture, or dislocation alone does not qualify under this definition. 2. Medical-legal and civil law (broad): Any lesion or injury to the body, including internal injury, blunt trauma, fracture, or dislocation, whether or not the skin is broken.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An injury such as a cut, stab, or tear to a usually external part of the body; also, a hurt to a person's feelings, reputation, or prospects. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 lists "wound" primarily as the past tense of wind, reflecting a grammatical entry rather than the injury sense — an artifact of lexicographic organization, not evidence that the injury meaning was absent from ordinary use. The gap between common and legal meaning here is not about the word itself but about its scope. Ordinary usage treats any serious injury as a wound; criminal law has at times insisted that only skin-breaking injuries qualify, excluding fractures or contusions that a layperson would naturally describe as wounds. A researcher encountering the word in a statute or indictment cannot assume the common meaning governs.
Common Confusion
Wound vs. bodily harm vs. grievous bodily harm: In English-derived criminal codes, these are distinct grades of injury. A wound (skin broken) is not automatically grievous bodily harm, and grievous bodily harm can exist without a technical wound. Early American statutes borrowed this graduated language imprecisely, creating interpretive inconsistency that persists in some jurisdictions. Wound vs. injury: In modern American criminal codes, injury is usually the governing term, and wound has largely receded from statutory text. Finding wound in an older statute or indictment signals a specific, narrower standard that modern injury language may not replicate.
Why It Matters in Research
The narrow criminal-law definition — skin must be broken — is an English statutory artifact traceable to 9 Geo. IV c. 31 (1828) and the judicial gloss applied to it. American jurisdictions that adopted wound-based offenses in the nineteenth century sometimes carried this limitation over; others ignored it. When researching assault, battery, mayhem, or early felony wounding statutes, a researcher must determine whether the jurisdiction adopted the skin-breaking requirement or the broader medical-legal definition. The same word in two neighboring state codes may carry different operative meanings. Historical sources create a secondary trap: Bouvier and Rapalje both give the broad medical-legal definition as primary, while Burrill and Black's emphasize the narrow criminal-law definition derived from English authority. A researcher relying on Bouvier alone to interpret a criminal wounding statute may reach a wrong result. In medical-legal sources and coroner's inquest records, wound operates broadly and will include internal injuries, fractures, and contusions. When tracking a death or injury across criminal records, medical testimony, and civil pleadings in the same case, the word wound may carry different meanings in each document. Modern American criminal codes have largely replaced wound with bodily injury, serious bodily injury, or grievous bodily harm, defined by statute. Wound as a standalone legal term of art is now primarily encountered in historical materials, some military law contexts, and comparative law research involving English or Commonwealth sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources agree on the basic split between narrow and broad definitions but differ in emphasis and framing. Burrill is the most precise on the criminal-law meaning, tying it directly to the English statutory authority and noting the judicial ruling that separation of the cuticle alone is insufficient. This is the most useful starting point for researching wound in a criminal indictment context. Bouvier takes the medical-legal definition as the baseline, explicitly contrasting it with the surgical definition and noting that legal usage is broader than surgical usage. Bouvier's framing treats the narrow criminal definition as a secondary or specialized application rather than the primary meaning. Rapalje & Lawrence aligns with Bouvier, leading with the broad definition (any lesion, including bruise, fracture, or burn) before acknowledging the surgical restriction. Black's occupies a middle position, acknowledging both the criminal-law skin-breaking definition and the broader medical-legal usage, and flagging the divergence between legal and surgical meanings. Anderson's Dictionary entry for wound is not usefully preserved in the available source text; the surviving excerpt is misaligned and provides no substantive entry on the term. None of the historical sources provide a systematic treatment of how American jurisdictions resolved the tension between the narrow English criminal definition and the broader medical-legal usage — a gap researchers must fill through primary sources.
Jurisdictional Note
The narrow skin-breaking definition derives from English statutory interpretation and was not uniformly adopted in the United States. Some American jurisdictions codified wound with the English limitation; others defined the offense by reference to bodily harm or injury without the skin-breaking requirement. Modern American statutes have largely abandoned wound as a defined term. Research in pre-twentieth-century American criminal law requires jurisdiction-specific analysis of how the term was understood locally.
Related Terms
Bodily harm — Grievous bodily harm — Mayhem — Battery — Assault — Injury — Lesion — Bodily injury — Contusion — Fracture — Maim — Felonious assault — Wounding with intent
WOUNDmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
In criminal cases, the defini- tion of a "wound" is an injury to the person by which the skin is broken. 22 Mo. 451; 6 Car. & P. 684. "In legal medicine, the term wound' is used in a much more comprehensive sense than in surgery. In the latter, it means strict- ly a solution of continuity; in the former, in-
WOUNDmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883
Any lesion of the body, whether cut, bruise, contusion, fracture, dislocation, or burn. In surgery it is confined to a solution of continuity in any part of the body suddenly caused by anything that cuts or tears with a division of the skin. The judicial questions which arise in cases of wounding (which is an aggravated goods saved belonged to the crown under the name of the wreck. See PREROGATIVE, 2.) This privilege was frequently granted to lords of manors. (See FRANCHISE, & 2; MANOR.) The strictness of the prerogative right to wreck was relaxed by early charters and statutes, under which the owners of shipwrecked goods were allowed to reclaim them within a year and a day, if they could identify them. 1 Bl. Com. 290; Stats. 3 Edw. I. c. 4; 27 Edw. III. c. 13; see Shepherd v. Kottgen, C. P. D. 578. 22. Modern law. -At the present day, "wreck" includes not only wreck at common law, but also jetsam, flotsam, ligan and derelict (q.v.); and statutory provision has been made for the appointment of officers whose duty it is to preserve wreck
WOUNDmain
Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890
See also Ν. N. As an abbreviation, ordinarily stands for new, non, northern, note: N. A. Non allocatur, it is not allowed. 3. To render imperfect - which is something less than to "destroy:" as, to mutilate See ALLOCATUR. a will. The courts speak of "records mutilated by erasures" and "by corrupt interlineations." Purposely taking from a will the signature of the testator deprives it of an essential part, and makes it so imperfect that it loses its legal force. The manner in which that is effected is not of controlling importance. Worrying sheep does not imply tearing them with the teeth: for a dog to pursue and bark at them is worrying them.¹ In a statute giving the owner of domestic animals, such as fowls, worried by a dog, the right to kill the dog, "worry" means to run after, chase, bark at.2 Within the meaning of 9 Geo. IV (1829), c. 21, s. 12, an injury to the person by which the skin is broken whole skin, not the cuticle merely.2 the Breaking a limb was not, then, a wounding; nor was biting off a finger, or the nose; nor was throwing acid in the face - because, in such cases, no instru ment inflicting at least a skin wound was used. Statute of 24 and 25 Vict. (1861), c. 97, s. 47, makes it an offense to kill, maim, or wound any cattle. "Wound" is distinguishable from "maim," which implies a permanent injury, whereas a wound is any mutilation or laceration which breaks the continuity of the outer skin. The injury may be as great when One room used as a chapel does not reserve the produced by manual power as by an instrument, whole building "for religious worship." & A Christmas-tree festival for Sunday scholars at a school-house is not an assembly for "religious worship." Camp-meeting grounds belonging to an association deriving profit therefrom are not to be exempt from taxation as a "place of worship."" "Religious worship" has no technical meaning, in a legal sense. Whether a temperance camp-meeting is "a public assembly convened for the purpose of religious worship" is a question of fact.s Receiving compulsory prices for admission to a camp-meeting on Sunday is worldly employment or business, and not within the exception of "works of necessity and charity." A prosecution for disturbing an assemblage for religious worship will not be sustained by proof that the meeting was for business purposes, though opened with religious exercises. 10 A building for "religious purposes" is exempt from taxation although used for educational purposes, so long as the use is merely incidental or occasional, or, if habitual, is purely permissive and voluntary and does not interfere with the use for religious purposes, there being no alienation (as, e. g., by lease) of the building in whole or in part for educational uses. 1 Campbell v. Brown, 1 Grant, 83 (1854). though in the former case it is not evidence of so much malice. In many cases there is great difficulty in determining what constitutes a wound. A scratch on the face, by rupturing the cuticle only, without separating the whole skin, is not a wound.5 The words "mortal wound," in an indictment for murder by felonious wounding, are superfluous when the indictment alleges a wounding which produces death. Wounding. As an injury to the limbs or body, consists in giving another some dangerous hurt; an aggravated species of battery. If death ensues from a wound given in malice, not in its nature fatal, but which, being neglected or improperly treated, causes death, the assailant may be held guilty of murder, unless it clearly appears that the neglect or treatment was the sole cause of the death. See MAYHEM; STAB. Saint Mary's Church v. Tripp, 14 R. L. 300 (1883), Durfee, C. J. Moriarty v. Brooks, 25 E. C. L. 598 (1834); Rex v. Wood, 19 id. 564 (1830); Regina v. M'Loughlin, 34 id. 561 (1838). 3 Rex v. Stevens, 1 Moody, C. C. 409 (1834); Rex v. 2 Marshall v. Blackshire, 44 Iowa, 478 (1876), Seevers, Murrow, ib. 456 (1835); Rex v. Harris, 32 E. C. L. 700 Chief Justice. (1836). See these cases explained, 11 Cox, Cr. C. 127, infra. Martin v. State, 6 Baxt. 234 (Tenn., 1873). Gass' Appeal, 73 Pa. 45 (1873). St. Joseph's Church v. Assessors, 12 R. I. 19 (1878). burn, C. J.: s. c., L. R., 1 С. С. 115. Layne v. State, 4 Lea, 200 (1879). Summit Grove Meeting Association v. School DisShaw, C. J.; State v. Leonard, 22 Mo. 450 (1856). trict of New Freedom, 12 W. N. C. 103 (Pa., 1882). • State v. Norris, 59 N. H. 536 (1880). 4 Regina v. Bullock, 11 Cox, Cr. C. 127 (1868), CockCommonwealth v. Gallagher, 6 Metc. 568 (1842), Brown v. State, 18 Fla. 476 (1881), cases, Randall, C. J.; People v. Steventon, 9 Cal. 275 (1858); Common73 Bl. Com. 121; 4 id. 216; 2 East, P. С. 1076. • Crum v. State, 64 Miss. 4 (1886), cases, Cooper, C. J.: 26 Am. Law Reg. 368 (1887); ib. 370-71, cases. • Commonwealth v. Weidner, 4 Pa. Co. Ct. R. 437 wealth v. Macloon, 101 Mass. 23 (1869). (1888): Act 22 April, 1794. 10 Wood v. State, 11 Tex. Ар. 318 (1882). Contra, Hollingsworth v. State, 5 Sneed, 518 (Tenn., 1858). X
WOUNDn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
imp. & p. p. of Wind to twist, and Wind to sound by blowing.
WOUNDn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
A hurt or injury caused by violence; specifically, a breach of the skin and flesh of an animal, or in the substance of any creature or living thing; a cut, stab, rent, or the like. Chaucer. Showers of blood Rained from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen. Shak. Fig.: An injury, hurt, damage, detriment, or the like, to feeling, faculty, reputation, etc. An injury to the person by which the skin is divided, or its continuity broken; a lesion of the body, involving some solution of continuity.
WOUNDv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To hurt by violence; to produce a breach, or separation of parts, in, as by a cut, stab, blow, or the like. The archers hit him; and he was sore wounded of the archers. 1 Sam. xxxi. 3. To hurt the feelings of; to pain by disrespect, ingratitude, or the like; to cause injury to. When ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. 1 Cor. viii. 12.
woundnoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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An injury, such as a cut, stab, or tear, to a (usually external) part of the body. | A hurt to a person's feelings, reputation, prospects, etc. | An injury to a person by which the skin is divided or its continuity broken.
woundverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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simple past and past participle of wind
woundverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
To hurt or injure (someone) by cutting, piercing, or tearing the skin. | To hurt (a person's feelings).

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