wound
Nurses wound wound bandages carefully.
The sentence describes nurses carefully wrapping injury bandages — using 'wound' first as the past tense of 'wind' (to wrap), then as the noun (an injury).
Meanings
wrapped or coiled around
- She wound the bandage around his arm.
- The clockmaker wound the spring tight.
an injury to living tissue caused by a cut, blow, or other impact
- The wound healed cleanly.
- Bullet wounds require immediate attention.
Word origin
Two etymologically distinct words: 'wound' the verb /waʊnd/ is the past tense of 'wind' (to coil, wrap), from Old English windan, from Proto-Germanic *windaną. 'Wound' the noun /wuːnd/ ('injury') is from Old English wund, from Proto-Germanic *wundō. The two share spelling because the past tense of 'wind' happened to develop the same orthography as the unrelated injury word.
Fun fact
The verb 'wind' has two completely different meanings depending on pronunciation: /wɪnd/ (the moving air) and /waɪnd/ (to coil). The past tense 'wound' inherits the latter pronunciation /waʊnd/ — a strong-verb past form like 'found', 'bound'. The noun 'wound' /wuːnd/ (injury) is a completely separate word that happens to share the spelling. So 'wind' itself is a heteronym, AND its past tense converges with another heteronym.