innocuous

adjective in·noc·u·ous \ i-ˈnä-kyə-wəs \

Updated on: 20 May 2018

Definition of innocuous

1 : producing no injury : harmless

2 : not likely to give offense or to arouse strong feelings or hostility : inoffensive, insipid

—

innocuously

adverb

—

innocuousness

noun

See innocuous defined for English-language learners

See innocuous defined for kids

innocuous was our Word of the Day on 07/15/2015. Hear the podcast!

Examples of innocuous in a Sentence

Gossip is a relatively innocuous manifestation; fashioning one's self as eternally battling a white America mired in "racism" is a more noisome one. —John McWhorter, Wall Street Journal, 17 Sept. 2003
Small and innocuous looking, the habanero is uncontested as the hottest pepper in the world, the mother of all peppers. —Jim Robbins, Smithsonian, January 1992
And there was LeRoy … a somewhat gruesome but innocuous neighborhood dimwit who gave me the creeps when he sat down on the front stoop to listen to a bunch of us talking after school. —Philip Roth, New York Times Book Review, 18 Oct. 1987
The salamander, an innocuous amphibian like a big newt, was also regarded with a mixture of horror and awe. —David Attenborough, The First Eden, 1987
He told a few innocuous jokes.
those innocuous lies we must tell every day if society is to remain civil

Recent Examples of innocuous from the Web

Calling the police to investigate the innocuous behavior of black people isn’t supposed to happen in Oakland, a city proud of its cultural identity.

— otis r. taylor jr., San Francisco Chronicle, "Even in Oakland, calling the cops on black people just living their lives," 17 May 2018
In many cases, the most hideous photos contained captions with innocuous hashtags in Arabic, including #Dads, #Girls, and #Cooking.

— issie lapowsky, WIRED, "Gruesome Jihadi Content Still Flourishes on Facebook and Google+," 17 May 2018
Unlike criminals trolling for passwords or other sensitive information, screen snoopers—also known as shoulder surfers or visual hackers— are usually just bored or curious and see mostly games, photos or innocuous texts, the German study found.

— sue shellenbarger, WSJ, "Forget the Hackers, Watch Out for the Phone Snoopers Over Your Shoulder," 9 May 2018
The Arsenal captain was stretchered off in the opening exchanges of his side's 1-0 defeat to Atletico Madrid on Thursday evening after a somewhat innocuous off-the-ball turn led to the defender being unable to carry on.

— SI.com, "Arsene Wenger Admits Laurent Koscielny Will Miss World Cup if Scan Confirms Achilles Tear," 4 May 2018
Then video surfaced from a February meeting of top city officials that showed White floating a similar conspiracy during an innocuous presentation about the University of the District of Columbia.

— Fox News, "Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories roil DC city government," 2 May 2018
Then video surfaced from a February meeting of top city officials that showed White floating a similar conspiracy during an innocuous presentation about the University of the District of Columbia.

— ashraf khalil, chicagotribune.com, "Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories roil D.C. city government," 2 May 2018
The incident sparked protests around the country and passionate conversations around the dangers for black people in white spaces, as well as the dangers of escalating innocuous incidents with police presence.

— anne branigin, The Root, "Black Men Arrested in Philly Starbucks Settle With City for $1 and City Pledge of $200,000 for Young Entrepreneurs, Settle With Starbucks for Undisclosed Amount," 2 May 2018
Then video surfaced from a February meeting of top city officials that showed White floating a similar conspiracy during an innocuous presentation about the University of the District of Columbia.

— NBC News, "Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories roil D.C. city government," 2 May 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'innocuous.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Look at the Prefix to Define innocuous

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 nocēre, meaning "to harm" or "to hurt." In addition, nocēre is related to the truly "harmful" words noxious, nocent, and even nocuous. Innocent is from nocēre as well, although like innocuous it has the in- prefix negating the hurtful possibilities. Innocuous first appeared in print in the early 17th century 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).