Harassment
Unwelcome conduct related to a protected status that poisons the workplace for the targeted employee or sometimes others.
In plain terms
Harassment means unwelcome conduct tied to a protected category—race, sex, disability, and others—that makes work genuinely harder to endure. You do not always need to be the only target; offensive conduct aimed at others can still poison your environment. Whether the harasser was a supervisor or a coworker changes which defenses and responsibilities the employer may have.