scar

1. noun

1)

the scar on his left cheek

Syn:

cicatrix, mark, blemish, disfigurement, discoloration, defacement; pockmark, pock, pit; lesion, stigma; birthmark, nevus; (scars) stigmata

2)

deep psychological scars

Syn:

trauma, damage, injury

2. verb

1)

the leg will heal, but he's likely to be scarred for life

Syn:

disfigure, mark, blemish, discolor; pockmark, pit; stigmatize

2)

the landscape has been scarred by strip mining

Syn:

damage, spoil, mar, deface, injure; rare disfeature

3)

she was profoundly scarred by the incident

Syn:

traumatize, damage, injure, wound; distress, disturb, upset

••

scarify, scorify

Scarify (from scar, but pronounced as if from scare) means (1) "make superficial marks or incisions in; cut off skin from"; (2) "break up the surface of (the ground) with a spiked machine [a scarifier] for loosening soil or building roads"; or (3) "pain by severe criticism."

Sense 1 is most common — e.g.: "Rub the seed across some sandpaper to weaken the hard seed coat or scarify it with a knife for better germination." (Virginian-Pilot [Norfolk]; Apr. 20, 1997.) This sense applies also to body adornment by cutting and scraping — e.g.: "Worse, once piercing becomes commonplace among people like, well, Leslie, the trendsetters up the ante with other forms of body alteration: cutting (scarification as adornment), branding (searing flesh with high heat in artistic patterns) and — please don't eat during this next sentence — tongue splitting, in which the tongue is cleaved nearly in half so as to cause it to fork like a lizard's." (Washington Post; Feb. 11, 2003.)

Sense 3 is also fairly common — e.g.: "With a combination of dazzling philosophical acumen and scarifying wit, Stove does for irrationalism in Karl Popper's philosophy … what the Romans did for Carthage in the Third Punic War." (New Criterion; Mar. 1997.)

An identically pronounced, but separate, scarify, based on the root word scare, dates from the late 18th century but remains mostly dialectal. It often carries a lighthearted connotation — e.g.: "The cost-of-living index had taken a scarifying new jump of 1.2 percent in February, to an annual rate of 15 percent." (Newsweek; Apr. 2, 1979.)

Scorify = reduce to dross or slag. The term surfaces most commonly in cognate forms, such as scorifier — e.g.: "Hanging adjacent to the furnace are the specialized tongs for handling crucibles, cupels and the dishlike ceramic containers called scorifiers." (Bulletin [Bend, OR]; Apr. 2, 1997.) — BG