nocent

no•cent (NOH-suhnt)  adj

Definition:
1. harmful; injurious
2. guilty (archaic)
Origin:
1400–50; late Middle English  from Latin nocent,  stem of nocens,  present participle of nocere  "to do harm"

Related:
Synonyms: damaging, deleterious, detrimental, disadvantageous, evil, harmful, injurious, mischievous, nocuous, prejudicial, ruinous, harmful
Related Words: innocent, nocuous, noxious, nuisance, pernicious, innocuous

Sentence Examples:
• But the law, except when it was on their own side, was of little importance to the church authorities. As they had failed to prove Philips guilty of heresy, they called upon him to confess his guilt by abjuring it; "as if," he says, "there were no difference between a nocent and an innocent, between a guilty and a not guilty." - History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth, James Anthony Froude

• These were demonstrated in your own observations made years ago. They show that Algæ are parasitic in the living spleen of healthy turtles. This leads to the remark that all parasitic growths are not nocent. - Scientific American Supplement, 1883

• Shortly, if an expurgatory index were compiled of those, and all other sorts of men, who either through their careless and neutral on looking, make no help to the troubled and disquieted church of Christ, or through their nocent accession and overthwart intermeddling, work out her greater harm, alas! how few feeling members were there to be found behind who truly lay to heart her estate and condition? - The Works of Mr. George Gillespie

Sources: Dictionary.com, Online Etymology

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