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Question

What’s the difference among ache, pain, injury, wound, hurt and harm when used as nouns?

Pieanne · Accepted Answer

One step into the matter: ache & pain refer the sensation, whether physical or psychological.

Injury & wound are actual body lesions ("hurt" can be too)

harm is more general (along with "hurt", too, I think)

Mister Micawber · Answer

And not easy to separate clearly, Chenyj-- much is collocational. We have toothache and stomach ache and shoulder pain and back pain, for instance. Wounds I think are externally visible and come usually from weapons, while injuries can be of the internal and domestic sort.

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Nona the brit · Answer

I'd use ache to describe a constant pain - my back aches, my head aches, my tooth aches...the pain is there until I take a painkiller or get cured! I'd use pain to describe something that doesn't hurt all the time. For example, I get a pain in my knee when I walk upstairs.

In addition, ache tends to get used for lower level pain and pain for more severe sensations...for example, if I've had too much to drink and my head is throbbing, that is a headache, whereas if I fell over and fractured my skull, I would feel pain in my head. Some are idiomatic - a toothache is never a toothpain however agonising! I get a stomach ache if I eat something that disagrees with me but I feel pain if I get apendicitis.

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