scar
n. countablen. a mark left on your skin after a cut or burn has healed. It can also mean a lasting feeling of sadness after a bad experience.
n. a mark remaining on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn, or sore has not quite vanished during healing. Often used metaphorically to describe lasting psychological damage.
He has a small scar on his knee from a childhood fall.
The surgeon explained that while the incision would heal quickly, it would leave a thin permanent scar.
The landscape still bears the deep scars of industrial mining, with vast pits and barren hillsides serving as a reminder of the region's heavy manufacturing past.
From Middle English scar, scarre, a conflation of Old French escare (“scab”) (from Late Latin eschara, from Ancient Greek ἐσχάρα (eskhára, “scab left from a burn”), and thus a doublet of eschar) and Middle English skar (“incision, cut, fissure”) (from Old Norse skarð (“notch, chink, gap”), from Proto-Germanic *skardaz (“gap, cut, fragment”)). Akin to Old Norse skor (“notch, score”), Old English sċeard (“gap, cut, notch”). More at shard. Displaced native Old English dolg, dolgswæþ, and wundswaþu (“scar”). Not related to scarify.
From Middle English scarre, skarr, skerre, sker, a borrowing from Old Norse sker (“an isolated rock in the sea; skerry”). Cognate with Icelandic sker, Norwegian skjær, Swedish skär, Danish skær, German Schäre. Doublet of skerry and scaur.
From Latin scarus (“a kind of fish”), from Ancient Greek σκάρος (skáros, “parrot wrasse, Sparisoma cretense, syn. Scarus cretensis”).
Commonly takes the preposition 'from' to indicate the cause of the injury.