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

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

nocuous

noc•u•ous (NOK-yoo-uhs)  adj

Definition:
likely to cause damage or injury; harmful; noxious

nocuousness noun; nocuously adverb

Origin:
1635; from L. nocuus, from nocere from *nok-s-, suffixed form of PIE base *nek- "death"

Related:
Synonyms: noxious, dangerous, deadly, harmful, injurious, malignant, poisonous, damaging
Antonyms: innocuous
Related Words: noxious, innocent, nuisance

Sentence Examples:
• "Don't care for't. Take back your choo, I'll keep me honor,--your plug, I mean, sonny. A gentleman of my eminence, sir, a natural-born navigator on the high seas of social life,--are you on, me bye?--a gentleman, I repeat, sir, whose canoe the mutations of all that is human have chucked on this here dry, thrice damned dry latitude, sir, this nocuous plague-spot of civilization,--say, kid, what t' hell am I talkin' about?Damn if I ain't clean forgot." -Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, Alexander Berkman

• But it is likely that Joyce Kilmer would only have succeeded in inadvertently bringing the religious singer once more into disrepute. There is perhaps nothing nocuous in his creed, as he expressed it in a formal interview: "I hope ... poetry ... is reflecting faith ... in God and His Son and the Holy Ghost." -The Poet's Poet, Elizabeth Atkins

• The media plays a particularly nocuous role in the Americans' willful ignorance about energy policy. I really hope this reporter will make this matter a major point of his career and report more on our unrealistic energy policy. -Time, 2010

The Storyline
... however nocuous it was to their virtual social lives.

Sources: Dictionary.com, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day