Lesive

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Causing injury or damage, especially to the body or to a person's well-being
2. Having the capacity to harm or wound, and therefore tending to do damage
3. Inclined to hurt or impair something, producing injury or detriment

Etymology: Lesive descends from the Latin verb "laedere," meaning "to hurt" or "to injure," whose past participle "laesus" gave Latin a family of words built on the idea of harm. The adjective traces back to the Late Latin "laesivus," formed from that same stem, so it describes something that wounds or damages the body. Its close relatives in English are easier to recognize. "Lesion" comes from the Latin noun "laesio," an injury or wound, and "lese-majesty," the old term for offending a sovereign, comes from "laesa maiestas," or "injured majesty." Lesive itself is rare, mostly confined to specialist or formal writing, but it shares that same core sense of harm.