bodily harm

A criminal offence against the person, being an aggravation of a simple assault and battery. Grievous bodily harm (GBH) involves serious physical injury, such as wounding with a knife, although the injury may be self-inflicted and need not be permanent. Actual bodily harm involves a less serious attack, involving any hurt or injury which causes ill health or discomfort. These terms are not used in all jurisdictions.

It refers to lasting harm done to the body, human or otherwise, although in its legal sense it is exclusively defined as lasting harm done to living human beings. It deliberately does not admit social, ideological, or psychological concepts of violence, but admits forms of property damage that a reasonable person would consider likely to cause lasting bodily harm;

Police actions are usually defined as those motivated by reducing bodily harm to "innocent" victims, even if violence or property damage is required to do so.

Doing bodily harm outside the legal process of a given society is usually considered crime, war, or "terrorism", a 20th century term describing various styles of guerrilla and asymmetric warfare.

Systematically reducing, channelling, or eliminating deliberate bodily harm from human public relationships is a major focus of political science.

Reduction of accidental bodily harm is a function of engineering that rises to special prominence in safety engineering and biomedical engineering.