battered

adjective

bat·​tered ˈba-tərd 

1

: damaged or worn down by hard use

a battered old hat

a battered truck

2

: injured by repeated blows

the victim's battered body

a boxer's battered face

3

: subjected to repeated physical abuse

providing help for battered wives/children

… the store turned into an impromptu women's crisis center, where battered women and mothers trying to rescue their daughters from abusive dads gravitated.

—Donna Minkowitz

Examples of battered in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

This is not a team that’s one acquisition, or even two or three, from making a deep playoff run, even in the battered Eastern Conference. —Julia Poe, Chicago Tribune, 27 June 2025

Iran needs to introspect upon the magnitude of its losses, address its immense intelligence vulnerabilities, regroup its battered military apparatus after the spate of assassinations, and more generally rebuild its defenses. —Vali Nasr, Time, 26 June 2025

Benjamin gave me a smooth pink stone out of a drawer in his battered desk. —C. Mallon, Harpers Magazine, 18 June 2025

But on January 11, 1937, a young man hunting rabbits south of Everett finds Charles’s naked, battered body dumped in a thicket of alders, knifed in the back and beaten in the head with a blunt instrument. —Caroline Fraser june 10, Literary Hub, 10 June 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1593, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing battered

• battered child syndrome
• battered woman syndrome

Rhymes for battered

• backscattered
• chattered
• clattered
• flattered
• mattered
• pattered
• scattered
• shattered
• spattered
• splattered
• tattered