road burn
- noun
- US
:
rozadura
- After falling off his bike, he had a painful road burn on his knee.
Examples
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The athlete showed off the road burn on his arm as a badge of honor after the race.
-
Get some road burn, come on!
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She applied ointment to the road burn she got from sliding on the pavement.
Synonyms
41
4.8
An area of skin rubbed off by scraping
3
5.7
Skin scraped when someone falls or slides on hard ground
How Severe
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'road burn' transparently signals an injury associated with the road (road + burn → a burn/injury related to the road), so a learner who knows both words will likely infer it is some kind of road-related skin injury. However, 'burn' prototypically denotes heat or chemical injury, whereas this term refers to a friction abrasion (like 'road rash'), so the exact nature of the injury is not fully predictable without exposure.
Etymology
Road burn comes from the image of skin rubbed raw after falling on the street: the road is the hard surface and the injured skin looks like a burn because it is scraped and sore. So, road burn means 'a scrape on the skin from sliding on the road'.