noxious

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:

noxious

Wikipedia

Alternative forms

• noctious (obsolete)

Etymology

From Latin noxius (“hurtful, injurious”), from noxa (“hurt, injury”), from nocere (“to hurt, injure”); see nocent.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈnɒkʃəs/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈnɑkʃəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Adjective

noxious (comparative more noxious, superlative most noxious)

1. Harmful; injurious.
   • 1822, John Barclay, chapter I, in An Inquiry Into the Opinions, Ancient and Modern, Concerning Life and Organization‎, Edinburgh; London: Bell & Bradfute; Waugh & Innes; G. & W. B. Whittaker, section I, page 1:

     In the living state, the body is observed to […] reject what is noxious; [...]

   • 2014 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891:

     [...] many old sewers have been neglected and are in dire need of repair. If that repair does not come in time, the result is noxious and potentially hazardous.

Synonyms

• harmful
• injurious
• scathing
• see also Thesaurus:harmful

Derived terms

• nonnoxious
• noxiously
• noxiousness
• noxious stimulus
• noxious trade
• unnoxious

Related terms

Etymologically related to noxia (“hurt, injury, damage”)

• obnoxious
• nocent
• innocent

Collocations

with nouns

• noxious substance
• noxious chemical
• noxious fumes
• noxious gas
• noxious odor
• noxious plant
• noxious weed
• noxious animal
• noxious stimulus
• noxious stimulation

Translations

harmful — see also mephitic

Arabic: please add this translation if you can Asturian: nocivu (ast) m, dañible (ast) m or f Basque: kaltegarri (eu) Bulgarian: вреден (bg) (vreden), нездравословен (bg) (nezdravosloven) Catalan: nociu (ca) Chinese: Mandarin: please add this translation if you can Corsican: nucivu m Esperanto: venefna Estonian: kahjur- Finnish: vahingollinen (fi), haitallinen (fi), myrkyllinen (fi) French: nocif (fr) m Friulian: nocîf Galician: nocivo (gl) m, daniño (gl) m German: Schad- (de), schädlich (de) Hindi: please add this translation if you can Hungarian: kártékony (hu), ártalmas (hu) Italian: insalubre (it), nocivo (it), malsano (it) Japanese: 有毒な (ゆうどくな, yūdokuna) Korean: 유해한 (yuhaehan) Latin: noxius m Latvian: kaitīgs Maori: orotā Persian: please add this translation if you can Polish: szkodliwy (pl), niezdrowy (pl) Portuguese: nocivo (pt) m, daninho (pt) m Romanian: nociv (ro) m or n, vătămător (ro) m or n, nesănătos (ro) m or n Russian: ядови́тый (ru) (jadovítyj), вре́дный (ru) (vrédnyj) Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: ште̏тан m Roman: štȅtan (sh) m Spanish: nocivo (es), daniño, nocible (p. us.), nocente (p. us.) Turkish: zararlı (tr) Vietnamese: độc hại (vi)

Further reading

• “noxious”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “noxious”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “noxious”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Douglas Harper (2001–2025), “noxious”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.