How to Use innocuous in a Sentence

innocuous

adjective
Definition of innocuousnext
Synonyms for innocuousnext
  • He told a few innocuous jokes.
  • But not all the fires were as innocuous as that of 1969.
    — Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian, 19 June 2019
  • The blood in the van could have come from an injury as innocuous as a bloody nose, O’Connor said.
    — David Owens, courant.com, 24 Jan. 2018
  • And all this around an innocuous pair of Tabi-toed Mary-Janes.
    — Daniel Rodgers, Vogue, 6 Sep. 2023
  • What may seem innocuous at the time could lead to larger problems down the road.
    — Marc Zalmanoff, Forbes, 29 June 2022
  • The lies of the Democrats are not so innocent or innocuous.
    — Gary Franks, Hartford Courant, 5 July 2024
  • Alarm bells should be ringing in your head at the innocuous tone.
    — Shira Ovide, Washington Post, 1 Mar. 2024
  • Many of the counts appear, on the surface, to be somewhat innocuous.
    — Christian Boone, ajc, 4 May 2021
  • But the defense has tried to show it all as innocuous, or even wholesome.
    — Jason Meisner, chicagotribune.com, 17 Sep. 2021
  • Most of the tips that come in to his department are found to be innocuous, Koren said.
    — Madeline Holcombe, CNN, 18 Aug. 2019
  • The small trees, which look so innocuous, have in fact become a lifeline.
    — Mary Holland, Robb Report, 22 Apr. 2023
  • The first post in the new Facebook group that was started on Wednesday was innocuous enough.
    — Sheera Frenkel, New York Times, 5 Nov. 2020
  • The episode opens with a scene that appears pretty innocuous.
    — Scott D. Pierce, The Salt Lake Tribune, 31 Oct. 2021
  • Looks like an innocuous piece of lifestyle brand spon-con, right?
    — Rebecca Alter, Vulture, 9 Nov. 2021
  • Rich asked a rep to school the group on this seemingly innocuous baking spice.
    — Mike Dang, Longreads, 1 Nov. 2017
  • Early in the second, the Panthers took the lead on a seemingly innocuous play.
    — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 23 Nov. 2022
  • This sounds innocuous: no middle class family will pay more than 7% of pay for the cost of child care.
    — Elizabeth Bauer, Forbes, 28 Sep. 2021
  • The most recent episode of Inside Amy Schumer was a fairly innocuous one.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 19 Oct. 2022
  • The reasons for the differences were innocuous, as well.
    — Rick Klein, ABC News, 4 Jan. 2022
  • An innocuous header from Perisic found its way to Mandzukic, who this time didn't miss.
    — SI.com, 11 July 2018
  • Of course, they can be used in fairly standard, innocuous ways.
    — Louise Matsakis, WIRED, 25 Apr. 2018
  • Sorry to be the bearers of bad news, but not even summertime dips in the pool are innocuous anymore.
    — Meghan Overdeep, Southern Living, 2 July 2019
  • Anything could set West off, sources say, and the reasons could be as innocuous as wearing the wrong color.
    — Cheyenne Roundtree, Rolling Stone, 10 Nov. 2022
  • The New York Times’ report on the matter offers only Alden’s point of view, which sounds innocuous enough at first blush.
    — Jason Linkins, The New Republic, 15 Oct. 2022
  • In the end, though, it’s Gruen’s innocuous character that gives his career a charge and this book its charm.
    — Washington Post, 4 Nov. 2020
  • In the third quarter, on an innocuous 3-yard, up-the-gut run by Mitchell, Williams fired into Quinn, the football equivalent of a quick jab.
    — Eric Branch, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 Nov. 2021
  • The act of taking a prescription pill can seem innocuous.
    — Zachary Siegel, The New Republic, 27 June 2023
  • But the blizzard of memes didn’t allow any time to distinguish between the cute and the offensive, the innocuous and the hateful.
    — Helen Lewis, The Atlantic, 30 Sep. 2020
  • Likewise, while most are innocuous and even cute, sleeping positions can also raise red flags about your cat’s health.
    — Discover Magazine, 3 Sep. 2024
  • Take, for example, an ostensibly innocuous monitoring tool like Sandvine, which was repurposed to suppress dissent in Egypt and Belarus.
    — Emil Sayegh, Forbes, 21 Oct. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'innocuous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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