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PlainSpell

damage

dam·age/ˈdæmɪd͡ʒ/noun, verb

damage is spelled D-A-M-A-G-E, 2 syllables: dam·age. The wrong spelling people search most is damge: about 20 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 135 of all searches for the word. Damage is a noun meaning “Injury or harm; the condition or measure of something not being intact”. The plural of damage is damages.

How many letters and syllables are in damage?

Letters6: D-A-M-A-G-E
Syllables2: dam·age
In writing79 times per million words; the 1,338th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched2; the most searched, damge, about 20 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 damage?

Damage is spelled D-A-M-A-G-E. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 68 of the searches for damage in either form.

damagethe right spelling2,670 searches a month
damgea missing a20 searches a month
dammagean extra m20 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 damage?

Damage appears 79 times per million words in written English, the 1,338th 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 damage?

  • /ˈdæmɪd͡ʒ/

Damage has 2 syllables, split dam·age in writing.

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

Forms of damage

  • damages plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • damaging participle, present
  • damaged participle, past

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

What does damage mean?

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

noun

  1. 1

    Injury or harm; the condition or measure of something not being intact.

    the damage is already done

  2. 2

    slangCost or expense.

    "What's the damage?" he asked the waiter.

verb

  1. 1

    To impair the soundness, goodness, or value of; to harm or cause destruction.

    Be careful not to damage any of the fragile items while unpacking them.

  2. 2

    obsoleteTo undergo damage; to take damage.

  3. 3

    To remove a damaged or unsalable item from the sales floor for processing.

    Did you damage the items that the customer returned yet?

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

How do you abbreviate damage?

Wiktionary records one abbreviation of damage: dmg.

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

Damage in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchdégât, dommage (abstract measure of something not being intact…), endommager, abîmer (to make something less intact or even destroy…)
GermanSchaden (abstract measure of something not being intact…), beschädigen (to make something less intact or even destroy…)
Portugueseavaria, dano, estrago (abstract measure of something not being intact…), estragar, danar, avariar (to make something less intact or even destroy…)
Spanishdaño, damno (abstract measure of something not being intact…), dañar, quiñar (to make something less intact or even destroy…)

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 damage come from?

From Middle English damage, from Old French damage, from Vulgar Latin *damnāticum from Classical Latin damnum. Compare modern French dommage. Largely displaced native Middle English scath (whence unscathed). Cognate with Spanish daño, Portuguese dano, Italian danno, French dam, Romanian daună.

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

What to look up after damage