casualty
n. countablen. a person who is killed or injured in a war or a serious accident. It can also describe something that is lost or destroyed because of a specific event.
n. a person killed or injured in a war or accident; by extension, a person or thing badly affected by an event or situation.
The army reported very few casualties after the battle.
Emergency services rushed to the scene of the crash to treat the casualties and secure the area.
While the physical casualties of the conflict were documented daily, the long-term psychological toll on the civilian population remained largely unquantified for several decades.
From casual, from Middle French casuel, from Medieval Latin casualitas and Late Latin cāsuālis (“happening by chance”), from Latin cāsus (“event”) (English case), from cadere (“to fall”). Originally meaning “a chance event” (compare casual, as in “casual encounter”), it developed a negative meaning as “an unfortunate event”, especially the loss of a person.
Often used in the plural to refer to the total number of victims in a specific incident.
The car accident was a casualty.There were three casualties in the car accident.A casualty refers to the person who is hurt or killed, not the accident or event itself.