What Does Nocuous Mean?

wondrous memeTime to learn more vocab with Wondrous Words Wednesday, a fun meme hosted by Kathy at bermudaonion.net.  It’s a great way to learn something new.

When I saw this word, I immediately thought of its antonym.  Let’s see if you do too:

The nocuous fungus ruined all the tomatoes in my garden!

 

Photo1 (31)nocuous \’näk-yə-wəs\ adj. from Latin nocuus, from nocēre, which means “to harm”; harmful

I could figure out nocuous because I know its more popular relative, innocuous.  It also sounds a lot like “noxious”.

Word Nerd Workout

Give a synonym for nocuous- BESIDES harmful or noxious.  Think of a really evil character, or a huge problem from a book you’ve read, to get some ideas.

Thanks for getting nerdy with me today!

Julia 

Julia Tomiak
I believe in the power of words to improve our lives, and I help people find interesting words to read. Member of SCBWI.

8 Comments

  1. Yup! I immediately thought of the antonym to figure it out.

    I am reminded of a recent Dictionary.com article about words whose roots have lost their meaning. Let’s see if I can remember any …

    discombobulate (there is no combobulate)

    Darn, I can’t think of the others!

    Dictionary.com has a lot of really neat articles. It’s a shame they sold out to such nocuous advertising that they’ve become almost unusable! And apparently they got rid of their index of old articles, because I can’t find the one I was talking about. 🙁

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