I used to know this stuff better than I do now, but at the risk of asking a stupid question... I was matching a bunch of NPN transistors, and mistakenly stuck one into the PNP side of the multimeter. Put it back into the NPN and it was a little fiddly in giving me a reading, but did... did I cause any damage? All I have left is as many as I need to finish my projects, otherwise I'd just toss it.
No, it's not going to be damaged hooking it up incorrectly to a meter. Silicon bipolar transistors are pretty hardy and are unlikely to be damaged even if you apply voltage to the "wrong" pins, e.g. put them into a circuit with the incorrect pinout, or npn instead of pnp. JFETs seem to also be quite durable: A MOS-FET is the only transistor device that I am super careful with, and they usually have an accompanying source->drain diode in circuit to reduce the chance of accidently zapping them.
Perfect, thanks for clearing that up!
Just to add something on leo's post...
Meters perform diode measurement at low voltage and ultra low "restricted" current so there isn't any chance to damage a BJT...