Innocuous Meaning
/ɪˈnɒkjuəs/Definition, CEFR level C2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
adjHarmless; producing no ill effect.
adjInoffensive; unprovocative; unexceptionable.
Sentence Examples
You may think your comment was innocuous, but I found it very offensive.
Her innocuous statement was actually a veiled insult.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The substance spilled on the floor was ____, so no one was injured.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The comment seemed ____ at first, but it actually caused a lot of tension among the group members.
Word Origin & History
From Latin innocuus (“harmless”) (therefore, no gemination in + nocuous).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"With its green cupola or tapering spire, / Which sunset touches with innocuous fire, / The little church appears, to sanctify / The precincts duly where men live and die— [...]"
— 1838, Richard Chenevix Trench, “Sonnet I. To England. In the Tyrol.”, in Sabbation; Honor Neale; and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 158:
"The shells fell for the most part innocuous; an eyewitness saw children at play beside the flaming houses; not a soul was injured."
— 1892, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 9, in A Footnote to History:
"Other things, too, there were, not less deadly though seemingly innocuous—dried fungi, the touch of which was death and whose poison was carried on in the air; also traps intended for birds, beast, fishes, reptiles, and insects; machines which could produce pain of any kind and degree, and the only mercy of which was the power of producing speedy death."
— 1911, Bram Stoker, “Mesmer’s Chest”, in The Lair of the White Worm, London: William Rider and Son, […], →OCLC, page 110:
"The effects of any one instance of TV absorbing and pablumizing cultural tokens seems innocuous enough."
— 1997, David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN:
"As the half closed [Gareth] Bale and [Joe] Ledley both went close with good efforts, but [Craig] Bellamy picked up a yellow card for an innocuous challenge that also rules the new Liverpool man out of the trip to Wembley."
— 2011 September 2, “Wales 2 — 1 Montenegro”, in BBC Sport:
Explore More C2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The substance spilled on the floor was ____, so no one was injured.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The comment seemed ____ at first, but it actually caused a lot of tension among the group members.