Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use harmless in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective

Harmless means incapable of causing harm or danger; safe. Example: “This snake looks nearly the same as its poisonous cousin but is harmless.”

Examples of harmless by meaning

adjectiveIncapable of causing harm or danger; safe.

  • This snake looks nearly the same as its poisonous cousin but is harmless.

adjectiveNot intended to harm; inoffensive.

  • His humor can be annoying but is harmless.

More sentences with harmless

  • While highly poisonous to dogs, this substance is completely harmless if ingested by humans.From the entry poisonous
  • A dust devil may look harmless, but a large one can overturn a car.From the entry dust devil
  • Donny’s obsession for trains is just a harmless particularity of his.From the entry particularity
  • In their sight it was harmless.From the entry sight
  • This is a subtle and harmless gesture of consideration that can still be practiced today.2025 September 8, E. J. Daniels, “How to Walk Like a Gentleman”, in Gentleman's Gazette. From the entry chivalric
  • He seemed harmless without any guile as he stood facing her, waiting for her.2021 May 1, Bruce Allsman, The Museum Curator, Bruce Yeoh. From the entry gesture
  • Parasomnic episodes may seem dramatic but they are almost always harmless.2020 September 24, Anders Bortne, Sleepless: A Thousand Wakeful Nights, One Solution, Sandstone Press Ltd, →ISBN. From the entry snoregasm
  • They are very active beneficial animals feeding on worms, soil grubs, etc., and thus harmless creatures.2016, T. W. Sanders, Garden Foes - Part I - Flower Foes, Read Books Limited. From the entry millepede
  • "The more often and louder you say it, the more harmless it becomes."2015 September 11, Christina Cauterucci, “Models Wearing Cartoon Penises Strike an Erect Pose at New York Fashion Week”, in Slate…. From the entry penis game
  • A fool who had never seen reality would think an old lady is harmless or weak.2014 August 15, Desha Blue, “News 2013”, in Psychiatric Abuse Poetry …: Shattering the Bloody Glass Ceiling, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris…. From the entry psych
  • I've known Ernie since we were kids; always a bit of an odd-bod, but he's completely harmless.2013, Brian Bailie, Bowen Bailie, Raising a Smile for Northern Ireland Children's Hospice, →ISBN. From the entry odd-bod
  • The bust also served to remind the public that the Mafia is not harmless.2011 January 27, “Borgata bust”, in The Economist. From the entry serve
  • This bullying continuum illustrates the progressive escalation from harmless banter to bullying and criminal behaviours.2007, Evelyn M. Field, Bully Blocking, page 17. From the entry banter
  • The monster goes unrecognized because he looks like a harmless, pudgy nobody rather than like a hobgoblin.2007, “Introduction: Phonoplay: Recasting Film Music”, in Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, Richard D. Leppert, editors, Beyond the…. From the entry hobgoblin
  • The first is a hold harmless agreement—a legal contract that limits or transfers liabilities between two parties.2001, It's All Your Fault!, Silver Lake Pub., →ISBN, page 253. From the entry hold harmless
  • Like insurance, you usually have to make a hold harmless agreement before a liability occurs.2001, It's All Your Fault!, Silver Lake Pub., →ISBN, page 253. From the entry hold harmless
  • "Very funny", said Don, "He's harmless, he's our - what, mascot." Like Tony the Tiger.1997, Jonathan Lethem, “Light and the Sufferer”, in The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye, page 143. From the entry Tony the Tiger
  • This makes library routines that use file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 harmless.1993, Stephen A. Rago, UNIX System V Network Programming, Pearson, →ISBN, page 89. From the entry /dev/null
  • He could visit and enter her bed for a harmless chit-chat after which he left.1989, Heritage Quest: HQ, numbers 20-22, page 65. From the entry queesting
  • There should be no place for the sharks among the harmless fish,” he added.1985, Miron Dolot, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust, New York: W.W. Norton, →ISBN. From the entry kurkul
  • It is a harmless plankton eater, and its name, whale shark has been confusing people for years.1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 42. From the entry whale shark
  • Man-eaters are more newsworthy than three-foot-long harmless sharks with tiny teeth.1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 146. From the entry man-eater
  • And finally you weave a tale around a harmless forest guard standing in a fire-break.1978, Hugh Gantzer, Flashpoint!, Vikas, →ISBN, page 69, →ISBN. From the entry whom're
  • You seem pleasant and harmless with your dark ingenu eyes and your nice Midwestern manners.1975, Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift, Viking, page 18. From the entry ingenu
  • To put this simple and in itself harmless finding learnedly, we substitute the terms “eurysome” and “leptosome.”1948, Alfred Louis Kroeber, Anthropology: race, language, culture, psychology, pre-history,, pages 173–174. From the entry eurysome
  • They are mostly harmless scavengers or nuisances or strigilators and are classified by Wheeler as being: a.1942, Edward Oliver Essig, College Entomology, page 672. From the entry strigilator
  • A harmless dog is killed, an inoffensive man's reason, if not his life, endangered.1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London. From the entry call to account
  • The wild-dog, however, is harmless by himself; like the khakies, his strength lies in numbers.1902, Dietlof Van Warmelo, On Commando, Methuen, published 1902. From the entry khakies
  • While some might see xAI’s new anime avatars as a harmless experiment, they’re emotional catnip for vulnerable users.2025 July 16, Marcus Mendes, “Grok may be breaking App Store rules with sexualized AI chatbots, and that’s not the only problem”, in…. From the entry catnip
  • For her, it embodies a certain air of harmless mischief.2022 March 14, Kari Paul, “Slobbing out and giving up: why are so many people going ‘goblin mode’ ?”, in The Guardian, archived from the…. From the entry goblin mode
  • While some see it as a harmless way to describe a messy phase, some have suggested the phrase is offensive.2022 April 2, Kalhan Rosenblatt, “'Goblin mode' is becoming part of people's everyday vocabulary. Language and meme experts share why.”…. From the entry goblin mode
  • In its more harmless form, fauxtomation is merely a marketing ploy, a way to make pointless products seem cutting-edge.2018 August, Astra Taylor, “The Automation Charade”, in Logic Magazine, number 5. From the entry fauxtomation
  • This lexicon should appeal to lexicographers—defined by Samuel Johnson as "harmless drudges"—lexicomanes, hyperlexics, lexies and wordies in general.2014, James L. Reynolds, “Preface”, in ElderSpeak: A Thesaurus or Compendium of Words Related to Old Age, iUniverse, →ISBN, page XII. From the entry lexicomane
  • THE MYTH: Training montages are inspiring, harmless fun.2013 October 29, Cracked.com, The De-Textbook: The Stuff You Didn't Know About the Stuff You Thought You Knew, Penguin, →ISBN, page 177. From the entry montage
  • It seems harmless enough, and often is; but if experienced players are doing it, the potential is there for collusion.2006, Randy Burgess, Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells: Devastate Opponents by Reading Body Language, →ISBN, page 149. From the entry angle-shooting
  • In any event, we have consistently deemed such misargument harmless under similar circumstances, and we do so here.1993, People v. Montielhttps://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/5/877.html. From the entry misargument
  • So feared is the word “nuclear” that there are those who balk at using such harmless phrases as “nuclear family”.1988 December 10, “Unclear Power”, in New Scientist, page 12. From the entry n-word
  • Might be a touch of harmless craziness."1977, Joe Ashby Porter, chapter 50, in Eelgrass (A New Directions Book [New Directions Paperbook]; [438]), New York, N.Y.: New Directions…. From the entry knock someone over with a feather

Meaning of harmless

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

Full definition of harmless

Questions about harmless in a sentence

How do you use harmless in a sentence?
Harmless is used as an adjective. For example: “This snake looks nearly the same as its poisonous cousin but is harmless.”
What is a short sentence with harmless?
“In their sight it was harmless.”
What does harmless mean?
Harmless means incapable of causing harm or danger; safe.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: harmless (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use harmless in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/harmless. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.