child abuse

1. 1.

   the physical or emotional or sexual mistreatment of children

   Broadermaltreatment

Questions about child abuse

What does child abuse mean?

child abuse means "the physical or emotional or sexual mistreatment of children".

Is child abuse a common word?

child abuse is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.