If a part of the body is contused, it is bruised: something hit it hard enough for blood to collect under the skin. The skin is often still closed; it may look dark, feel sore, and change colour over a few days. This is a doctor's word, the kind you meet on a hospital report or in a textbook. In ordinary talk, people just say bruised. You will almost never hear contused in a shop or at school. Though actually, the idea is the everyday bruise you get from a bang on a table or a fall — not a deep cut, and not a broken bone, though a hard hit can leave you with both a bruise and something worse. Doctors sometimes write contused wound when the blow both bruised the flesh and broke the skin a little. The rare verb behind it is contuse, 'to bruise'; almost nobody uses that verb outside medicine.