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Both mean to cause damage, but one focuses on immediate physical or emotional pain, and the other on damage or injury in a broader sense.
Side-by-side comparison
"Hurt" focuses on pain: physical or emotional. "My leg hurts" = my leg is in pain. It can also be intransitive, unlike "harm".
She fell and hurt her knee.
His words really hurt me.
My back hurts after sitting all day.
"Harm" is more formal and broad. It refers to damage or injury in general, not just pain. Includes harm to objects, reputations, or relationships. "Smoking harms your health".
Smoking harms your health in many ways.
The scandal harmed his reputation permanently.
Pesticides can harm the environment.
Common mistake
"My knee harms" is wrong: "harm" is almost always transitive and needs an object. "My knee hurts" is correct. "Hurt" = immediate and personal pain; "harm" = damage or negative consequences, more formal.
Trick to remember it
- •"Hurt" = pain (immediate, personal): "my back hurts", "hurt feelings".
- •"Harm" = damage (consequences, can be abstract): "harm the environment", "do no harm".
Quick rule
- •"Hurt" = physical or emotional pain (immediate).
- •"Harm" = damage or negative consequences (more formal).
Did you know?
"Do no harm" is the fundamental medical principle attributed to the Hippocratic oath: "primum non nocere" in Latin (first, do no harm). The derived adjectives reveal the register difference: "harmful" (causing damage, formal and abstract) vs "hurtful" (emotionally wounding, more personal). "A harmful chemical" vs "a hurtful comment." "Harmless" (posing no risk) and "unhurt" (not physically injured) follow the same pattern. "Pain in the neck" (an annoyance) is an idiom where "pain" replaces frustration, neither "hurt in the neck" nor "harm in the neck" would work there.
Practise what you learned
Exercise 1 · Pick the right one
He fell off his bike and _____ his knee. It was swollen for days.
Exercise 2 · Pick the right one
Pollution is _____ ing the environment more than we realise.
Exercise 3 · Form the word
Related word pairs
'Miss' means to fail to catch, hit or attend something; 'lose' means to no longer have something, or to be defeated.
"Above" is at a higher level without contact; "over" implies covering, movement, or crossing.
'Currently' means 'at the present time'; 'actually' means 'in reality', not 'nowadays'.
"Actually" corrects or contrasts an assumption; "really" intensifies or confirms.
Bryan López
Founder of SpeakUP Academy