Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use innocuous in a sentence

18 example sentences · adjective

Innocuous means harmless; producing no ill effect. Example: “I don't know why she gave me an ice-cold look — I had thought that the topic of conversation was totally innocuous.”

Examples of innocuous by meaning

adjectiveHarmless; producing no ill effect.

  • The effects of any one instance of TV absorbing and pablumizing cultural tokens seems innocuous enough.1997, David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”, in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and...

adjectiveInoffensive; unprovocative; unexceptionable.

  • He sat down, and lighted a cigarette, casting about the while for an innocuous topic of conversation.1910, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 29, in The Intrusion of Jimmy

More sentences with innocuous

  • I don't know why she gave me an ice-cold look — I had thought that the topic of conversation was totally innocuous.From the entry ice-cold
  • That might sound like an innocuous action to you, but in truth, it was far from it.2024 March 21, Arthur C. Brooks, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Do the Silent Treatment”, in The Atlantic. From the entry silent treatment
  • The debate seemed innocuous—a minor kerfuffle, but nothing that couldn’t be resolved and moved on from.2023 May 28, Nadia Asparouhova, “Remembering GitHub's Office, a Monument to Tech Culture”, in Wired, →ISSN. From the entry kerfuffle
  • There is nothing innocuous, innocent or whimsical in a Totalitarian society, at least in the public sphere.2020 September 25, Charles Hugh Smith, The Road to Nowhere: Whatever Can't Be Politicized Ceases to Exist. From the entry whimsical
  • This unit will deliver the required innocuous HF current bursts and will individually command each microstimulator.2015 July 6, “In Vivo Demonstration of Addressable Microstimulators Powered by Rectification of Epidermically Applied Currents for…. From the entry microstimulator
  • This was no innocuous donnybrook but a veritable carnival of thuggee.2002, Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea, Vintage, published 2003, page 223. From the entry donnybrook
  • A scratch company of two innocuous youths and a pacified veteran was therefore what now offered itself to Mrs.1902, Henry James, The Wings of the Dove. From the entry scratch
  • Here’s a more innocuous example: If students are making repeated references to Bugatti, the luxury sports car, they might be watching Andrew Tate videos.2023 February 10, Madeline Will, “5 Ways Teachers Can Confront Students’ Exposure to Andrew Tate and Other Online Extremists”, in…. From the entry what color is your Bugatti
  • Meanwhile, during ‘Verdanagate’, unbridled fury was unleashed after furniture store Ikea made what it thought was an innocuous switch from Futura to Verdana.2013 April 30, Etan Smallman, “To Helvetica and back: Our love/hate relationship with typefaces”, in Metro, archived from the original on…. From the entry Verdanagate
  • I tried to turn away and found myself winking some more at the most innocuous wedding-goer I could find: Francine's great-aunt in the front row.2012, Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, →ISBN. From the entry wedding-goer
  • I believe that this is important, because taken in isolation the kind of enhancements portrayed by transhuman philosophers might seem relatively innocuous.2011, Ronald Cole-Turner, Transhumanism and Transcendence, →ISBN. From the entry transhuman
  • The innocuous trauma of high pressure jets and bubble massage to the insensate breast and back areas had caused the bruising seen in the picture.2005 Feb. 5, “Minerva”, in BMJ: British Medical Journal, volume 330, number 7486, page . 316. From the entry insensate
  • Why, to be sure! a kiss is now attestedly a quite innocuous performance, with nothing very fearful about it one way or the other.1919, James Branch Cabell, Jurgen. From the entry attestedly
  • To take infinite precautions, they complained, against the juvenile perusal of such eminently innocuous literature was like reading the Riot Act on an uninhabited island.1911, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “Ministers of Grace”, in The Chronicles of Clovis, London: The Bodley Head. From the entry read someone the riot act
  • Tossing off malefactor, mausoleum and monarch with ready dispatch, Bierce soon came hand‐to‐paw with one of the most grapplesome words of his time, the ostensibly innocuous noun monkey.1968, LIFE - Vol. 65, No. 21: Evolution Revolution in Arkansas. From the entry grapplesome
  • Even the putatively innocuous whimsical shapes and designs of cakes and pastry, notably in Central Europe, retain to this day the phallic concept, the cryptic induration of the aphrodisiac function.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page iii. From the entry cryptic

Meaning of innocuous

  1. adjective Harmless; producing no ill effect.
  2. adjective Inoffensive; unprovocative; unexceptionable.

Full definition of innocuous

Questions about innocuous in a sentence

How do you use innocuous in a sentence?
Innocuous is used as an adjective. For example: “I don't know why she gave me an ice-cold look — I had thought that the topic of conversation was totally innocuous.”
What is a short sentence with innocuous?
“This was no innocuous donnybrook but a veritable carnival of thuggee.”
What does innocuous mean?
Innocuous means harmless; producing no ill effect.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: innocuous (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 innocuous in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/innocuous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.