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casualty

cas·u·al·tyUK /ˈkaʒʊ.əlti/noun

casualty is spelled C-A-S-U-A-L-T-Y, 4 syllables: cas·u·al·ty. The wrong spelling people search most is casulaty: about 10 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 156 of all searches for the word. Casualty is a noun meaning “Something that happens by chance, especially an unfortunate event; an accident, a disaster”. The plural of casualty is casualties.

How many letters and syllables are in casualty?

Letters8: C-A-S-U-A-L-T-Y
Syllables4: cas·u·al·ty
In writing4.1 times per million words; the 12,764th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, casulaty, about 10 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).

How do you spell casualty?

Casualty is spelled C-A-S-U-A-L-T-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 157 of the searches for casualty in either form.

casualtythe right spelling1,560 searches a month
casulatya and l swapped10 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is casualty?

Casualty appears 4.1 times per million words in written English, the 12,764th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce casualty?

  • UK /ˈkaʒʊ.əlti/
  • UK /ˈkaʒʊlti/
  • UK /ˈkaʒəlti/

Casualty has 4 syllables, split cas·u·al·ty in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-casualty.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with casualty

Also written: casualty department.

Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Forms of casualty

  • casualties plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does casualty mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    Something that happens by chance, especially an unfortunate event; an accident, a disaster.

  2. 2

    A person suffering from injuries or who has been killed due to an accident or through an act of violence.

  3. 3

    proscribedSpecifically, a person who has been killed (not only injured) due to an accident or through an act of violence; a fatality.

  4. 4

    A person in military service who becomes unavailable for duty, for any reason (notably death, injury, illness, capture, or desertion).

  5. 5

    UKClipping of casualty department: the accident and emergency department of a hospital providing immediate treatment.

  6. 6

    An incidental charge or payment.

  7. 7

    Someone or something adversely affected by a decision, event or situation.

  8. 8

    obsoleteChance nature; randomness.

    The non-necessary [causes] follow; of which, saith Fuchsius, no art can be made, by reason of their uncertainty, casualty, and multitude […]

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you abbreviate casualty?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of casualty: Cas..

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Casualty in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchaccident (an accident, a disaster), victime, blessé (person), urgences (accident and emergency department of a hospital)
GermanUnfall, Unglück, Unglücksfall, Kalamität, Desaster (an accident, a disaster), Opfer (person)
Portuguesebaixa (person), emergências, urgências, urgência (accident and emergency department of a hospital)
Spanishbaja (person), urgencias (accident and emergency department of a hospital)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does casualty come from?

From casual, from Middle French casuel, from Medieval Latin casualitas and Late Latin cāsuālis (“happening by chance”), from Latin cāsus (“event”) (English case), from cadere (“to fall”). Originally meaning “a chance event” (compare casual, as in “casual encounter”), it developed a negative meaning as “an unfortunate event”, especially the loss of a person.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after casualty