Meaning of harm in English

harm

noun [ U ]

/hɑːm/ us

/hɑːrm/

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physical or other injury or damage:

It was not my intention to cause any harm.

do someone harm Missing a meal once in a while never did anyone any harm.

do something harm A mistake like that will do his credibility a lot of harm.

come to harm She was frightened by the experience but she came to no harm (= was not hurt).

See also

actual bodily harm

grievous bodily harm

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There's no harm in applying for other jobs, but if I were you, I wouldn't advertise the fact at work.
Huge projects designed to aid poorer countries can sometimes do more harm than good.
I'm sure he's well-intentioned - he wouldn't mean any harm.
Modernizing historic buildings can often do more harm than good.
Should any harm befall me on my journey, you may open this letter.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Damaging and spoiling

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Injuring and injuries

Idioms

do more harm than good
mean no harm
no harm no foul
out of harm's way
there's no harm in something/doing something

harm

verb [ T ]

/hɑːm/ us

/hɑːrm/

to hurt someone or damage something:

Thankfully no one was harmed in the accident.

The government's reputation has already been harmed by a series of scandals.

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Research shows that it is not divorce per se that harms children, but the continuing conflict between parents.
The oil that discharged into the sea seriously harmed a lot of birds and animals.
She only buys dolphin-friendly tuna fish that is caught without harming dolphins.
If you harm her, you're going to have the police to reckon with.
He claims that the report has harmed his reputation.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Damaging and spoiling

See more results »

Idiom

harm a hair on someone's head

(Definition of harm from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

harm | American Dictionary

harm

noun [ U ]

/hɑrm/

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physical or other injury or damage:

Missing a meal once in a while won’t do you any harm.

Fortunately, she didn’t come to any harm when the car skidded.

Maybe Jim can help you – there’s no harm in asking (= no one will be annoyed and you might benefit).

harm

verb [ T ] us

/hɑrm/

The tornado blew out the windows of a nearby school, but none of the children were harmed.

harmful

adjective us

/ˈhɑrm·fəl/

This group of chemicals is known to be harmful to the environment.

(Definition of harm from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

harm | Business English

harm

noun [ C or U ]

/hɑːm/ us

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damage done to something:

The board failed to prove irreparable harm in its suit against the council.

The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized.

not do (any) harm to sb/sth The bond offers great benefits for issuers without doing any harm to investors.

economic/environmental/financial harm

do more harm than good

used to say that an action is not helpful and could make a situation worse:

Suspending payments on government debts would do more harm than good.

harm

verb [ T ]

/hɑːm/ us

to damage something or make something worse:

harm the economy/environment/country Economists warned that such a spending pattern could not be sustained without harming the economy.

harm business/industry

(Definition of harm from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of harm

harm

But, apart from that, it also directly and immediately harms her by reducing her control of the purely self-regarding portion of her life.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Even if ' verb ' is taken here as a shorthand for ' argument-taker ', it may be thought that no harm is done, because prototypical argument-takers are verbs.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

He found that serious injury was rare following an incident as either intervention or luck tended to prevent significant harm in the majority of cases.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

From this work, a more complex picture emerges about the developmental trajectories of children harmed both early and later in life.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The magnitude of possible harm would be sufficient to trigger protections.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Ultimately, as we shall see, property owners would, indeed, be found to have a duty to the general public to protect their property from harm.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

If the proposal directly harms persons without their free and informed consent, then bioethicists should agree that the proposal is to be rejected.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, the probability of any harm from 100 mg nifedepine, compared with the placebo group, is quite high.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Moreover, harm to others might be precisely the point the draft evader wants to make.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Are the recommendations supported by the estimated benefits, harms, and costs of the intervention?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Does the maneuver, procedure, or service do more good than harm to people who fully comply with the associated recommendations or treatment?

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Moreover, in both cases the harm flows from an unjustified governmental action, namely the action of enacting the r ule.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

For present purposes, however, no harm is done if we set this intuition aside. 16.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

On the other side of the equation is the thought that an individual can be harmed by being brought into existence.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Nevertheless, and perhaps surprisingly, the central liberty principle admits censorship of certain extraordinary types of expression which necessarily harm others.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of harm

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with harm

harm

These are words often used in combination with harm.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

actual harm

The same point can be made about a corporation's ties to the community irrespective of its actual harm to it.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

considerable harm

The mere knowledge that an inspector has been appointed could cause a company very considerable harm.

From the

Hansard archive

Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

emotional harm

Emotional harm was reserved for narrated events that did not entail concurrent physical harm.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all collocations with harm

What is the pronunciation of harm?

Translations of harm

in Chinese (Traditional)

傷害，損害，危害, 傷害，損害…

Meaning of harm in English

Idioms

Idiom

harm | American Dictionary

harm

harmful

harm | Business English

Examples of harm

Collocations with harm

harm

Translations of harm

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