harm

Meanings

1. 1noununcountable

   Injury, damage or trouble caused to someone or something.

   Grammar: No plural, no a: do harm, cause harm.

   Patterns

   • do harm to someone
   • cause harm
   • come to harm

   Too much sun can cause harm to your skin.

   No harm came to the children.

   The study asks whether screens do harm to sleep.

2. 2verbtransitive

   To injure or damage someone or something.

   Grammar: Takes an object: harm the environment.

   Patterns

   • harm someone
   • harm something

   Chemicals can harm the river's fish.

   He would never harm a child.

   Delays could harm the company's reputation.

3. 3noununcountable

   Something thought to be wrong or bad; wrong.

   Grammar: Mostly in negative questions: what's the harm in asking?

   Patterns

   • no harm in doing something

   There's no harm in asking for a discount.

   What harm can one small lie do?

   I see no harm in trying.

Word forms

Common combinations

do harm

Sugary drinks do harm to teeth.

cause harm

The leak could cause serious harm.

mean no harm

He meant no harm by the joke.

come to harm

No one came to harm.

harm the environment

Plastic harms the environment.

out of harm's way

Keep the children out of harm's way.

Synonyms and how they differ

damage

Damage usually refers to physical things, while harm applies to people, feelings and objects.

injure

Injure stresses physical hurt to a body.

hurt

Hurt is more casual and often covers feelings.

injury

Injury is the countable physical wound, while harm is an uncountable general word.

Opposites

Word family

harmful adjective

likely to cause damage

harmless adjective

unlikely to cause damage

harmfully adverb

in a damaging way

harmfulness noun

the quality of being damaging

Commonly confused: harm or harmony?

Practice

Make it your own

Write a sentence using “harm”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.

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