1A mark left on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn, or sore has not healed completely and fibrous connective tissue has developed.

1. 1.1 A lasting effect of grief, fear, or other emotion left on a person's character by an unpleasant experience.
   the attack has left mental scars on Terry and his family

   Example sentencesExamples

   • It's happy music, but it comes from our souls, from our emotional scars.
   • As for the supposed trauma… almost every talented psychic has mental scars.
   • Physically he was back to his best, but Jackson still insists the mental scars of that summer robbed him of a metre.
   • I generally haven't played characters that have deep emotional scars and trauma, and I loved diving into the mind of a troubled character.
   • Her honesty helped me realize that my mental and emotional scars were far more disfiguring than my physical ones.
   • The mental scars were harder to bear than the physical, and it took Janine many months to recover from the trauma of the crash.
   • After confronting mum and dad, I have been able to get on with my life but I still bare the emotional scars and visual torments of dreams and visions.
   • But he said the mental scars have proved more difficult to overcome.
   • She has since made a full recovery but still bears the mental scars from the accident.
   • Many experience ostracism from their own families during formative years, with deep emotional scars resulting.
   • Those years I lived so close to death had left their emotional scars upon me.
   • We will carry the mental scars from Italy, but not one of those players died from them.
   • The driver, who lives in Chiseldon but doesn't want to be identified, says the incident has left mental scars.
   • But it also left emotional scars, and bitterness that Hull's suffering was never properly recognised.
   • It did leave emotional scars and it still hurts.
   • Their traumatic experiences have left deep emotional scars and impacted on their lives enormously.
   • The original Essex geezers of electro-pop have a tremendous new album, an impressive array of emotional scars and a re-invigorated lust for life to discuss.
   • A blood transfusion and 52 stitches saved her life but she still bears the mental scars 25 years later.
   • Some have witnessed the full atrocities of war, family break-ups or bereavement and they still carry the emotional scars.
   • Twenty years later in Winnipeg, he will meet Judith, a runaway who saves him from his emotional scars as he saves her from the streets.

   Synonyms

   trauma, damage, shock, injury, suffering, upset
2. 1.2 A mark left on something following damage of some kind.
   Max could see scars of the blast

   Example sentencesExamples

   • Many of the scars on the summit and slopes are the result of past excavations.
   • The result will be a raw scar through blasted rocks that we will have to live with for generations.
   • As you would expect from a new film, there are no nicks, scars, or other defects that migrated from the source print to the digital realm.
   • Capt White apparently walked away unharmed, but the hanger still bears the scar, a deep indentation above its heavy iron doors.
   • They are paint patches covering rocket blast scars from the political violence of mid-1997.
   • Channeled and rip-rapped, the creek bears similar scars from ill-conceived attempts at pruning.
   • Sadly, that's not the case, as is shown by the scars of clearcuts and logging roads on our 191 million acres of national forests.
   • Under nearly every square mile of the swamp lie these ducts, though water and vegetation have hidden their scars.
   • Each stroke of the blade sent branches crashing into the undergrowth and gouged deep scars into the old oaks.
   • He worries that the mule track would leave a scar on the hillside.
   • Some scars, such as a ramp towards the summit in the south-west, were perhaps cut by the 1776 miners.
   • Early in the year, around the time when petals fall, the overwintered beetles cut semicircular scars in fruit as they feed.
   • And the crew left no telltale scars on the fragile hillsides where they had been intensely working, she says.
   • The obvious place to look was at scars in rocks which had been etched by the radioactive decay process.
   • The scar created by quarrying the hillside below the Nab is visible from a wide area, but excavations are now going downwards below the level of the surrounding land.
   • A programme of full restoration work was then undertaken to ensure that the exterior of the quarry would not show up as a scar on the hillside.
   • Charlie sat down at the table, and traced its scars and stains with her eyes.
   • Beyond the first wells, roads and land scars gouged by tracked vehicles began accumulating.
   • I followed scars posing as roads and faded tracks not shown on any map yet drawn.
   • This is the sharp end of practical conservation work, literally healing the mountain of unsightly erosion scars and gullies.
3. 1.3 A mark left at the point of separation of a leaf, frond, or other part from a plant.
   this fossil bark is typified by its lozenge-shaped leaf scars

   Example sentencesExamples

   • These two parts should snap apart easily by hand and leave a clean scar on the new corm.
   • The ‘root’ is not a true root but the swollen base of the stem, and these marks are leaf scars.
   • Leaf scars, which resemble suction cups, are found on the winter twigs when the leaves fall.

2A steep high cliff or rock outcrop, especially of limestone.

1Mark with a scar or scars.

1. 1.1no object Form or be marked with a scar.
   his arm will not scar

   such lung scarring is associated with cigarette smoking

   Example sentencesExamples

   • This may lead to scarring of the lungs (pulmonary fibrosis).
   • When asbestos fibers enter the lung, they cause the tissue to harden and scar around them.
   • Sometimes called chronic lung disease or CLD, it's a disease in infants characterized by inflammation and scarring in the lungs.
   • Use of the new product had significantly improved the level of healing and reduced the unsightly scarring associated with bad burn injuries.
   • The warning follows a High Court test case involving ten people from around the country who suffered pleural plaques - scarring of the lungs - through exposure to asbestos dust.
   • These babies develop fluid in the lungs, scarring and lung damage, which can be seen on an X-ray.
   • The disease involves scarring of the lung, which causes an irreversible loss of the tissue's ability to transfer oxygen into the bloodstream.
   • This leads to a continual inflammatory process causing scarring of the lung tissue.
   • The case centred around pleural plaques, a benign condition which causes scarring to the lung lining and which is caused by exposure to asbestos.
   • Less common causes of breathing problems are lung cancer, a blood clot in the lungs, air leakage around the lungs, and scarring of the lung tissue.
   • She needed surgery, and, nearly a decade later, still takes painkillers for the injury, which also left her with severe scarring on her right arm.
   • None had lung disease such as emphysema, lung scarring or asthma.
   • Three main diseases are related to asbestos: asbestosis, or lung scarring, lung cancer and mesothelioma, or cancer of the lining of the chest or abdomen.
   • His arm felt - and looked, except for some minor scarring - perfectly fine.
   • All of these can cause the inflammation and scarring associated with BPD, even in a full-term newborn, or very rarely, in older infants and children.
   • You have been diagnosed by your physician as having one of the many diseases which can cause interstitial pulmonary fibrosis or what we call lung scarring.
   • After we leave our skin problems behind in adolescence, a new set follows in adulthood: wrinkles, mild scarring and blemishes, and conditions caused by sun exposure, smoking and heredity traits.
   • Examination of other organs, including the brain, showed only old scarring of the middle lobe of the right lung.
   • He has scarring from burns on his face, chest, and arms, but those have healed quite well, and certainly aren't the cause of his problems now.
   • The scarring on my left arm was so severe that I had to wear an elastic burn sleeve for more than a year to help repair it.