The English words for parts of the body, illness, pain and going to the doctor, each with its CEFR level.
For anyone who needs to explain what hurts, understand a doctor, or follow a fitness class in English.
Body words are learned early (head, hand, eye), but the health words around them (injury, swollen, surgery) are B1. Those are the ones you need in a hurry, at a pharmacy or a doctor, so they are worth learning before you need them.
Beginners learning the parts of the body, and anyone living or travelling abroad who wants to be able to describe a symptom clearly.
Learn the body parts first, then attach what can go wrong with each one (a sore throat, a swollen ankle, a headache). Practise the sentence you would say at a doctor: where it hurts, since when, and how much.
All my muscles ache.
She wears ankle boots.
Her arm is broken.
I have a backache.
I shave my beard.
I kissed her belly.
Do your gums bleed?
It looks like blood.
Your body is soft.
The bone is broken.
He used his brain to solve the problem.
Take a breath now.
How do insects breathe?
You have a bruise.
He stroked my cheek.
I have chest pain.
Keep your chin up!
He heard someone cough.
I am a dentist.
Prejudice is a disease.
My ear is hurting.
What causes tennis elbow?
We need to exercise.
The soldiers are exhausted.
Nobody opened an eye.
Her eyebrow was slightly raised in surprise.
His eyelash is dry.
The bedrooms face west.
You have a fever.
She pointed with her finger to the correct answer.
Do you practice fitness?
He got the flu.
My left foot hurts.
Your forehead is hot.
His hair is wet.
Hand me the scissors.
Is her head red?
He has a headache.
Health is a treasure.
Is tomato sauce healthy?
What broke your heart?
I have a sore heel.
I fell from a height.
He loves hip-hop.
I was in hospital.
It hurt so much.
Your brother is ill.
I have an illness.
Did you injure your hand?
He has an injury.
He opened his jaw wide to take a big bite of the apple.
He suggested joint ventures.
The doctor checked his kidney function.
My left knee hurts.
Bend your right leg.
Your lip is bleeding.
The doctor checked my liver for problems.
Healthy humans have two lungs for breathing air.
Does this medicine work?
He had a moustache.
My mouth dried up.
I pulled a muscle.
The nail is bent.
My neck hurts today.
His nose is broken.
The operation went well.
I felt intense pain.
Her son is patient.
The pill was bitter.
I just cracked a rib.
He carried the heavy box on his shoulder.
He called in sick.
We only have the skeleton of the plan so far.
His skin is smooth.
The archaeologist found a human skull in the ancient tomb.
I am getting slim!
I have to sneeze.
A shiver descended my spine.
My stomach hurts after eating too much.
I got a stomachache.
He needs emergency surgery.
I need to sweat.
His eye was swollen.
The tablet went dark.
I was very tall.
I took my temperature.
My throat is irritated.
I cracked my thumb.
The woman is tired.
My toe started bleeding.
He bit his tongue.
My tooth still hurts.
She has a toothache.
Bend at the waist.
The weight of the box made it difficult to lift.
The wound is infected.
He grabbed my wrist.
Some example sentences come from the Tatoeba Project (tatoeba.org), CC BY 2.0 FR. The rest were written for MindDory. Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR.
A list has an end. The words you keep for good usually turn up somewhere else — in a page you read, a show you watched, or a conversation you had — one at a time, and rarely at the level you planned for.
MindDory connects to Claude, Cursor, and other assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol, so a word you meet while you are chatting is saved to your deck as a flashcard without you leaving the conversation. There is no copy and paste, no CSV export, and no browser extension.