innoxious

innoxious

English

Etymology

From Latin innoxius.

Adjective

innoxious (comparative more innoxious, superlative most innoxious)

1. (archaic) Having no harmful effect; harmless, innocuous.
   • 1669, Walter Charleton, “Of the Mysterie of Vintners” in Two Discourses, London: William Whitwood, p. 165,

     But of all wayes of hastening the Clarification and Ripening of new Wine, none seems to me to be either more easie, or more innoxious, than that borrowed from one of the Ancients by the Lord Chancellor Bacon, […] which is by putting the wine into vessels well stopped, and letting it down into the Sea.

   • 1715–1720, Homer; [Alexander] Pope, transl., “Book 17”, in The Iliad of Homer, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], OCLC 670734254, page 31:

     T]he Jav’lin idly fled, / And hiss’d innoxious o’er the Hero’s Head […].

   • 1817 December​, [Jane Austen], chapter XIV, in Persuasion; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume (please specify |volume=III or IV), London: John Murray, […], 1818, OCLC 318384910:

     Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.

   • 1875, A. Hutchison Smee, Milk in Health and Disease, London: Edward Newman, p. 13,

     Considering that milk is used by persons of all constitutions,—by the young and the aged, and by persons suffering from fever,—the use of a foreign material like borax, in one of the most important of all foods, ought to be restricted, unless it can be shown by authority to be innoxious.

   Synonyms: harmless, inoffensive, innocuous