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innocuous

UK/ɪˈnɒkjuəs/US/ɪˈnɑkjuəs/
adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,762 of 15,258neutral

Innocuous means completely harmless. An innocuous remark, seemingly innocuous, innocuous enough.

It is nearly always used with seemingly or apparently, which tells you what the word is for: an innocuous-looking thing that turned out not to be. The Latin means not harmful, and noxious is the same root with the negative removed.

Definitions of innocuous

  1. 1adjectiveinnocuousCompletely harmless.C1

    “What seemed an innocuous question upset her far more than I expected.”

innocuous is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin innocuus, in-, not, plus nocuus, harmful, from nocere, to harm. Noxious is a relative.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *neḱ-

  2. Latin

    innocuus — harmless

  3. English, today

    innocuous

From Latin innocuus (“harmless”) (therefore, no gemination in + nocuous).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

innocuous in the wild

  • Thermal stimuli may be noxious (posing a threat to the subject) or innocuous (no threat).

    Thermoception

  • Individuals born with SCID are abnormally susceptible to infections, and exposure to typically innocuous pathogens can be fatal.

    David Vetter

  • "Fig leaf" is an idiom for obscuring an act or object considered embarrassing or distasteful with something of innocuous appearance.

    Fig leaf

  • The film was only fully released following the Liberation of Rome, alongside other equally innocuous films such as The Innocent Casimiro.

    Lively Teresa

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.