INNOCUOUS \ih-NAH-kyuh-wus\ adjective
1 : producing no injury : harmless
*2 : not likely to give offense or to arouse strong feelings or hostility : inoffensive, insipid
Example sentence:
Bella was surprised when her seemingly innocuous remark enraged her classmates.
Did you know?
"Innocuous" has harmful roots -- it comes to us from the Latin adjective "innocuus," which was formed by combining the negative prefix "in-" with a form of the verb "nocere," meaning "to harm" or "to hurt." In addition, "nocere" is related to the truly "harmful" words "noxious," "nocent," and even "nocuous." "Innocent" is from "nocere" as well, although like "innocuous" it has the "in-" prefix negating the hurtful possibilities. "Innocuous" first appeared in print in 1598 with the clearly Latin-derived meaning "harmless or causing no injury" (as in "an innocuous gas"). The second sense is a metaphorical extension of the idea of injury, used to indicate that someone or something does not cause hurt feelings, or even strong feelings ("an innocuous book" or "innocuous issues," for example).
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