Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Innocuous \In*noc"u*ous\, a. [L. innocuus; in- not + nocuus hurtful, fr. nocere to hurt. See Innocent.] Harmless; producing no ill effect.
A patient, innocuous, innocent man.
--Burton.
-- In*noc"u*ous*ly, adv. -- In*noc"u*ous*ness, n.
Where the salt sea innocuously breaks.
--Wordsworth.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. harmless; producing no ill effect.
WordNet
adj. not injurious to physical or mental health [syn: harmless] [ant: noxious]
unlikely to harm or disturb anyone; "harmless old man" [syn: harmless]
not causing disapproval; "it was an innocuous remark"; "confined himself to innocuous generalities"; "unobjectionable behavior" [syn: unobjectionable]
lacking intent or capacity to injure; "an innocent prank" [syn: innocent]
Usage examples of "innocuous".
The screen went blank for a moment, then was filled with an innocuous cityscape, a KOMA logo in the bot- torn corner.
We walked quickly back toward the accessway, toward the duffle and the robes which would grant us innocuous identities again.
Their mobility made them innocuous to the gazer, the opposite of plants which drew their light directly from the earth.
Their mobility makes them innocuous to the gazer, the opposite of plants which draw their light directly from the earth.
Minutes later, Hsiao was speaking the innocuous code phrases which would inform Colonel Kriangsak where and when his master would speak with him.
Robbie seemed innocuous enough, but she had kidnapped him and planned to elude the police without her lover Rickey getting the blame for any of it.
He swallowed, trying to come up with a plausible way to explain his behavior in a perfectly innocuous manner.
It was only a day and a night since the mystical presence manifested itself in the alley as an innocuous, vapory child of willowy, fanciful smoke.
The dense forest of West Country Marre pine cut the wind into innocuous puffs that soughed through the needle-laden branches, causing them to dip and sway like the wavelets of a becalmed sea.
Among them are invisible inks and microdots and arrangements in which, for example, the first letter of each word in an apparently innocuous text spells out the real message.
For a short five minutes the four mismated persons sat trying to think of innocuous subjects of conversations, then St.
Reasoning that the obvious was often the most innocuous, they had flashed a wad of bills and their NUMA IDs and persuaded the owner of the parasail and the winch boat to spare his equipment for a few hours.
We sipped the well-iced innocuous stuff and he said again that Offen would have to be prosecuted, if only to provide a reason for Allyx and Showman having disappeared for so many years, and to account for the tattoo marks inside their mouths.
Even the innocuous nightingales were moralized, spiritualized, turned into citizens and anglicans -- and along with the nightingales, the whole of animate and inanimate Nature.
The second, concealed in the first and still largely innocuous to Coalition eyes, concerned itself with a perceived obstructionist element in New Amazonian government.