different between harmless vs innoxious

English

Etymology

From Middle English harmles, from Old English *hearml?as, from Proto-Germanic *harmalausaz (“without harm; harmless”), equivalent to harm +? -less.

Cognate with German harmlos (“harmless”), Danish harmløs (“harlmess”), Swedish harmlös (“harmless”).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?h??ml?s/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?h??ml?s/

Adjective

harmless (comparative more harmless, superlative most harmless)

1. Incapable of causing harm or danger; safe.
2. Not intended to harm; inoffensive.
3. (obsolete) Unharmed.

Synonyms

• benign
• innocent
• innocuous
• undamaging

Antonyms

• harmful

Derived terms

• harmlessly
• harmlessness

Translations

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,^[1]

     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.

   • 1720, Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer, London: Bernard Lintot, Volume 5, Book 17, p. 31,^[2]

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

   • 1818, Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 14,^[3]

     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,^[4]

     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