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noxious

UK/ˈnɒkʃəs/US/ˈnɑkʃəs/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,704 of 15,258leans written

Noxious means harmful and unpleasant, especially to breathe. Fumes you should be nowhere near.

It attaches to gases, fumes and substances, and a noxious smell is one that signals danger rather than merely offending. The word is stronger than unpleasant and more specific than toxic, since noxious implies immediate harm through exposure. There is a figurative use about influence, since a noxious atmosphere in an organisation is one that damages the people in it. Obnoxious is a different word about behaviour.

Definitions of noxious

  1. 1adjectivenoxiousHarmful and unpleasant, especially to breathe.C1

    “Noxious fumes were coming from the drain.”

Where it comes from

Noxious is Latin noxius, hurtful, from noxa, an injury, and nocēre, to hurt. It is the same verb standing inside innocent, which means one who does no harm.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *neḱ-

  2. Latin

    noxius — hurtful, injurious

  3. English, today

    noxious

Built from

  • noxa · Latin — hurt, injury
  • nocere · Latin — to hurt, injure

From Latin noxius (“hurtful, injurious”), from noxa (“hurt, injury”), from nocere (“to hurt, injure”); see nocent.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 11 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

noxious in the wild

  • Both noxious and non-noxious stimuli can trigger AD.

    Autonomic dysreflexia

  • Treating AD immediately involves removing or correcting the noxious stimuli.

    Autonomic dysreflexia

  • The United States Secretary of Agriculture was given the authority to declare plants "noxious weeds", and limit the interstate spread of such plants without a permit.

    Federal Noxious Weed Act of 1974

  • Most noxious weeds have been introduced into an ecosystem by ignorance, mismanagement, or accident.

    Noxious weed

  • Some noxious weeds are native, though many localities define them as necessarily being non-native.

    Noxious weed

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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.