CASUALTY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does casualty mean? 

• CASUALTY (noun)
  The noun CASUALTY has 4 senses:

1. someone injured or killed or captured or missing in a military engagement

2. someone injured or killed in an accident

3. an accident that causes someone to die

4. a decrease of military personnel or equipment

  Familiarity information: CASUALTY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CASUALTY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone injured or killed or captured or missing in a military engagement

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("casualty" is a kind of...):

victim (an unfortunate person who suffers from some adverse circumstance)

Domain category:

armed forces; armed services; military; military machine; war machine (the military forces of a nation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Someone injured or killed in an accident

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

casualty; injured party

Hypernyms ("casualty" is a kind of...):

victim (an unfortunate person who suffers from some adverse circumstance)

Sense 3

Meaning:

An accident that causes someone to die

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

casualty; fatal accident

Hypernyms ("casualty" is a kind of...):

accident (an unfortunate mishap; especially one causing damage or injury)

fatality; human death (a death resulting from an accident or a disaster)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "casualty"):

collateral damage ((euphemism) inadvertent casualties and destruction inflicted on civilians in the course of military operations)

Sense 4

Meaning:

A decrease of military personnel or equipment

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Hypernyms ("casualty" is a kind of...):

decrease; drop-off; lessening (a change downward)

Domain category:

armed forces; armed services; military; military machine; war machine (the military forces of a nation)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "casualty"):

damage; equipment casualty (loss of military equipment)

loss; personnel casualty (military personnel lost by death or capture)

 Context examples 

At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

They loved and sympathised with one another; and their joys, depending on each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place around them.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Meanwhile, the total reported casualties increased to 167 from a previous 93 injured people.

(Aftershocks increase death toll of magnitude 6.3 earthquake in southern Philippines, Wikinews)

Here likewise the regulation of children is settled: as for instance, if a Houyhnhnm has two males, he changes one of them with another that has two females; and when a child has been lost by any casualty, where the mother is past breeding, it is determined what family in the district shall breed another to supply the loss.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

When the matron Houyhnhnms have produced one of each sex, they no longer accompany with their consorts, except they lose one of their issue by some casualty, which very seldom happens; but in such a case they meet again; or when the like accident befalls a person whose wife is past bearing, some other couple bestow on him one of their own colts, and then go together again until the mother is pregnant.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

If they can avoid casualties, they die only of old age, and are buried in the obscurest places that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure; nor does the dying person discover the least regret that he is leaving the world, any more than if he were upon returning home from a visit to one of his neighbours.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)