innocuous

Meanings

1. Not harmful or likely to cause injury or damage.
2. Not offensive or controversial, and unlikely to upset anyone.

Example sentences

• "It seemed an innocuous question, but it upset her."

  Level C1, Meaning 2

• "The chemical is innocuous in small amounts."

  Level C1, Meaning 1

• "He made an innocuous joke about the weather."

  Level C1, Meaning 2

• "The software looked innocuous, but it contained a virus."

  Level C1, Meaning 1

Synonyms and antonyms

Look-alikes and common mistakes

• innocent : Innocent is about guilt or lack of experience. Innocuous is about harm: something that will not hurt.
• harmless : Harmless is the plain word. Innocuous is more formal and often hints that something only looked harmless at first.

Word family and forms

Word partners

Words and phrases that often go with "innocuous".

• innocuous remark
• innocuous question
• seemingly innocuous
• an innocuous substance
• innocuous enough
• relatively innocuous

Origin

Innocuous comes from Latin innocuus, made from in-, meaning not, and nocuus, meaning harmful, a word related to the Latin verb for to harm. English writers first used it in the 1590s.

Checked against: Wiktionary, the free dictionary, Dictionary.com.

How to remember it

Innocuous is in plus nocuous. Nocuous is an old word for harmful, so innocuous means not harmful.

Test yourself

Learn next at C1

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