casualty

(kăzh'ū-əl-tē)
n., pl., -ties.

1. An accident, especially one involving serious injury or loss of life.
2. One injured or killed in an accident: a train wreck with many casualties.
3. One injured, killed, captured, or missing in action through engagement with an enemy. Often used in the plural: Battlefield casualties were high.
4. One that is harmed or eliminated as a result of an action or a circumstance: The corner grocery was a casualty of the expanding supermarkets.

[Middle English casuelte, from Old French, from Medieval Latin cāsuālitās, chance, accident, from Latin cāsuālis, fortuitous. See casual.]

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The main current meaning is now 'a person killed or injured in a war or accident'. The historically earlier meaning of the mishap itself is less common, although the two are sometimes interwoven, e.g. All wars have caused casualties among civilians.

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Liability or loss resulting from an accident. Such liability or losses are covered under such policies as the following: business automobile policy (bap), business property and liability insurance package, businessowners policy (bop), casualty insurance, commercial general liability form (cgl), condominium insurance, homeowners insurance policy, personal automobile policy (pap), simplified commercial lines portfolio policy (sclp), tenants insurance, and workers compensation insurance .

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noun

1. An unexpected and usually undesirable event: accident, contretemps, misadventure, mischance, misfortune, mishap. See help/harm/harmless, surprise/expect.
2. One that is made to suffer injury, loss, or death: prey, victim. See help/harm/harmless.
3. A termination of life, usually as the result of an accident or a disaster: death, fatality. See live/die.

n.any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared “dead, ” “missing, ” “ill, ” “injured, ” or “duty status-whereabouts unknown.”

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

A serious or fatal accident. A person or thing injured, lost, or destroyed. A disastrous occurrence due to sudden, unexpected, or unusual cause. Accident; misfortune or mishap; that which comes by chance or without design. A loss from such an event or cause, as by fire, shipwreck, lightning, etc.

An inevitable casualty is one that occurs through no fault of anyone. It happens totally without design, as in the case of an accident resulting from an act of God, such as a house struck by lightning or flooded by a storm.

A casualty loss is a tax deduction that can be taken for an accident that is incurred in a trade or business, in a transaction entered into for profit, or for the complete or partial loss or destruction of property owned by the taxpayer. It arises from certain specific events such as a fire, an auto accident, or a flood. Casualty losses are computed subject to special rules and are treated as itemized deductions.

Many people purchase casualty insurance so that they will be protected or covered in the event of specific misfortune or accident. It is a type of insurance that covers losses resulting from injuries to people.

(DOD) Any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status - whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured. See also casualty category; casualty status; casualty type; duty status - whereabouts unknown; hostile casualty; nonhostile casualty.

IN BRIEF: The result of a fatal or serious accident or disaster.

There was only one casualty in the accident.

Tutor's tip: The "causality" (the relationship between cause and effect) of the "casualty" (a person who is killed or injured) is not obvious.

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An accident; an accidental wound; death or disablement from an accident; also the animal so injured.

• c. slaughter — abattoir slaughtering of injured or sick animals. Rarely done these days because of the difficulty of getting cattle with fractured or dislocated limbs onto the abattoir floor. The modern, highly automated meat packing plant is not geared to such interruptions.

For a list of words related to casualty, see:

• Soldiers and Military Life - casualty: military person wounded or killed in battle
• Dead or Dying - casualty: person killed in war or accident

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See words rhyming with "casualty."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Casualty.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Common misspelling(s) of casualty

• casulaty

Dansk (Danish)
n. - ulykke, offer, tab

Nederlands (Dutch)
slachtoffer, verlies, ongeluk, (mv) doden en gewonden, eerste hulp afdeling

Français (French)
n. - (gén) victime, urgences (dans un hôpital), (fig) victime

Deutsch (German)
n. - Opfer, Menschenopfer

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - θύμα (ατυχήματος, πολέμου κ.λπ.), απώλεια, ατύχημα

Italiano (Italian)
vittima

Português (Portuguese)
n. - acaso (m)

Русский (Russian)
жертва, пострадавший

Español (Spanish)
n. - víctima, accidente, desgracia, baja , pérdida

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - olycksfall, offer

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
严重事故, 受害者, 伤亡

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 嚴重事故, 受害者, 傷亡

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 불의의 사고, 사상자

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 不慮の災難, 傷害, 戦闘犠牲者, 負傷者, 死者

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) اصابه, جريح, قتيل‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮נפגע, חלל, תאונה, נעדר‬

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