This verb means to harm, injure, or disable, used in classical Greek for everything from laming horses' feet to hindering someone's plans. The word suggests preventing something from functioning properly or causing damage that impairs normal operation. Both New Testament occurrences involve supernatural contexts where expected harm remarkably does not occur. Mark's longer ending promises believers that drinking deadly poison 'will not harm them' (Mark 16:18), while Luke describes how a demon threw a man down but departed 'without harming him' (Luke 4:35). The verb emphasizes protective preservation—the absence of expected injury.