Word.ws English Dictionary

non-lethal

non-lethal adjective: not capable of causing death.

Adjective

non-lethal (not comparable)

  1. Not capable of causing death.
    • a non-lethal dose
  2. Designed to cause incapacitation without causing death.
    • Government officials think a universal malodor, or offensive odor, might prove effective as a non-lethal weapon.
    Synonyms:
    less-lethal

Noun

non-lethal (plural non-lethals)

  1. Any weapon that incapacitates without causing death.

Synonyms of non-lethal

Forms of non-lethal

Adjective
alternative formnonlethal
Noun
pluralnon-lethals

Origin of non-lethal

From non- + lethal.

Questions about non-lethal

What does non-lethal mean?
Non-lethal means not capable of causing death.
What part of speech is non-lethal?
Non-lethal can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near non-lethal in the dictionary

  1. non-leap years
  2. non-legalism
  3. non-lemma
  4. non-lemmas
  5. non-lemmata
  6. non-lethal
  7. non-lethals
  8. non-lexical
  9. non-libidoist
  10. non-libidoists
  11. non-licentious

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: non-lethal (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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