Word.ws English Dictionary

hurt/comfort

hurt/comfort noun: a genre of fan fiction in which a character receives comfort from another after or while suffering injury, illness, or a traumatic experience.

Noun

hurt/comfort (uncountable)

  1. (slang) A genre of fan fiction in which a character receives comfort from another after or while suffering injury, illness, or a traumatic experience.
    • Hurt/comfort stories often contain enough gore to send shivers down the back of activists concerned with the conflation of sex and violence.1993, Cynthia Jenkins, "Menage a Deux", SBF 3, November 1993 (quoted in Henry Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, New York University Press (2006), page 84)
    • She proposes that writing slash — specifically the hurt/comfort genre, which involves assault, abuse and recovery — provides a therapeutic outlet for genuine, deep feelings of emotional pain.2002, Will Brooker, Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans, Continuum, →ISBN, page 137
    Synonyms:
    h/c

Synonyms of hurt/comfort

Questions about hurt/comfort

What does hurt/comfort mean?
Hurt/comfort means a genre of fan fiction in which a character receives comfort from another after or while suffering injury, illness, or a traumatic experience.
What part of speech is hurt/comfort?
Hurt/comfort is a noun.

Words near hurt/comfort in the dictionary

  1. hurt a fly
  2. hurt for
  3. hurt locker
  4. hurt people hurt people
  5. hurt someone's feelings
  6. hurt/comfort
  7. hurtability
  8. hurtable
  9. Hurtado
  10. Hurtados
  11. hurtal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hurt/comfort (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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