These words all mean to affect a person or thing in such a way as to lessen health, strength, value, beauty, etc. Harm and damage are both wide in application. Harm refers to living things and, occasionally, to inanimate objects: afraid that in his fury he would harm the child; worried that her belongings might have been harmed . The point of the word is that it can suggest any sort of negative outcome, and thus is widely used in an abstract way, especially when an immoral or unethical impairment is at issue: those who unwittingly harm the cause of peace. Damage stresses impairment of value or function and, while it can be applied to living things, is more commonly used to refer to inanimate objects.

• Her heart was slightly damaged as a result of her long illness; The gale damaged several houses; The candidate damaged his chances of election by a very poorly run campaign.

Hurt , the most informal of the group, is mainly, but not wholly, restricted to living things, and is general in applying to both a severe or minor impairment: a puppy that had been hurt by the tomcat; a few scratches, proving that children are bound to get hurt when they play; badly hurt in the car crash; a reputation hurt by an enemy’s vicious lies. Injure is a slightly formal substitute for hurt. But, while hurt concentrates more on the registering of a pain that need not override usefulness, injure often indicates at least a temporary loss of some function: continuing to type as fast as ever, though she had hurt her finger while manicuring her nails; a bird that hopped about helplessly as if one of its wings had been injured .

Disable and incapacitate both intensify suggestions of injure in pointing more definitely to a temporary or permanent loss of function. Of the two, disable is more likely to suggest a partial impairment, perhaps permanent, but one that need not affect usefulness: serving as chairman of the board, though disabled by polio. Incapacitate , by contrast, is more formal and tends to suggest a total loss of function or effectiveness: the tragedy of a very active man who had been incapacitated by a stroke. Both words, however, go beyond the previous pair in their application to inanimate things: its retro-rockets disabled by a misfire during blast-off; snow-clogged roads that would incapacitate any car without tyre chains.

ANTONYMS; repair, treat.