porazhenie

Porazhenie, transliterated from Russian as porazhenie and written поражение in Cyrillic, is a noun that denotes defeat or injury. It is derived from the verb поразить, meaning to strike, to hit, or to affect, with the standard noun-forming suffix -ение. The term is used for both outcomes of adversarial activity and for physical or pathological damage, depending on context.

In military and sports contexts, porazhenie denotes defeat: the opponent suffers a defeat, with common Russian expressions such as ponesti porazhenie (to suffer a defeat) and oderzhat porazhenie (to incur a defeat). In medical and biological contexts, porazhenie refers to injury or lesion of tissue or organs, for example porazhenie kozhi (skin lesion) or porazhenie nervnoy sistemy (nerve system involvement). It can also describe damage caused by toxins, trauma, or electrical injury (elektricheskoe porazhenie).

Porazhenie is a neutral term used across domains, and its exact meaning depends on the context. It is distinct from related concepts such as pobeda (victory) and razrushenie (destruction). In everyday language, it can convey both the outcome of a conflict and the presence of physical or pathological damage, reflecting its broad semantic range.

See also: victory, defeat, injury, and lesion. In linguistic usage, porazhenie illustrates how a single word can cover multiple closely related ideas, from the outcome of competition to tangible damage in medicine.