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hurtful

adj
/ˈhɜːtfʊl/UK/ˈhɜɹtfʊl/US

Etymology

From hurt + -ful.

  1. derived from *herutuz✻
  2. derived from hrútr — “ram (male sheep)”
  3. inherited from *hyrtan✻
  4. derived from *krew-✻ — “to fall, beat, smash, strike, break”
  5. derived from *hūrt✻ — “a battering ram”
  6. derived from hurter
  7. inherited from hurten
  8. suffixed as hurtful — “hurt + ful”

Definitions

  1. Tending to impair or damage

    Tending to impair or damage; injurious; occasioning loss or injury.

    • A good principle not rightly understood may prove as hurtful as a bad.
    • Well-cultivated soils are often healthy; nor at present has it been proved that the use of manure is hurtful.

  2. Tending to hurt someone's feelings

    Tending to hurt someone's feelings; insulting; lacerating.

    • Better yet, maybe she should call and apologize for all of the rude comments she spewed in the midst of her anger—hurtful comments that should never be spoken between a wife and her husband.
    • This mentality made me an incredibly hurtful person, but I wasn't concerned with how others felt about me.

The neighborhood

Derived

unhurtful

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at hurtful. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01hurtful02impair03negatively04damaging05injurious

A definitional loop anchored at hurtful. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

5 hops · closes at hurtful

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA