Victim

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈvɪktɪm/

Definitions

1. A person who suffers harm, injury, or death as a result of a crime, accident, or other adverse circumstances
2. A person who experiences harm, suffering, or loss due to crime, misfortune, or violence
3. a person who experiences harm, loss, or suffering from a crime, accident, disaster, or intentional wrongdoing
4. Someone who is harmed, injured, or killed by another's actions or by unfortunate events
5. someone subjected to injury, death, or misfortune through criminal acts, accidents, or unfortunate events

Etymology: The most striking fact here is that English once had a native word for this idea and lost it. Old English "tifer" meant "offering" or "victim," as in something set aside for the gods, but it was displaced over the centuries by a Latin import. That import was "victima," a Latin word for a sacrificial animal, the creature led to the altar and killed in a religious rite. It passed into Middle French as "victime" before reaching English. The sacrificial sense is the original one, and the idea of a person suffering harm is a later extension of it: the one who is slaughtered on the altar becomes, in a looser sense, anyone who is destroyed or hurt by forces beyond their control. The word is often assumed to be related to "victor," since both look like they come from the same source, but the two are traditionally reconstructed as separate words that only happen to look alike in their ancestral forms.

Synonyms: prey, sufferer, casualty

Antonyms: perpetrator, offender