Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Harmful to living things; injurious to health: noxious chemical wastes.
- adj. Harmful to the mind or morals; corrupting: noxious ideas.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Hurtful; harmful; baneful; pernicious: as, noxious vapors; noxious animals.
- Guilty; criminal.
- Synonyms Noxious, Pernicious, Noisome, pestiferous, pestilent, poisonous, mischievous, corrupting. That which is noxious is actively and energetically harmful. That which is pernicious is as actively destructive. Noisome and noxious were once essentially the same (see Job xxxi. 40, margin; Ps. xci. 3; Ezek. xiv. 21), but noisome now snggests primarily foulness of odor, with a secondary noxiousness to health. Unwholesome vapors that do not offend the sense of smell would now hardly be called noisome.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Hurtful; harmful; baneful; pernicious; injurious; destructive; unwholesome; insalubrious; ; pernicious; corrupting to morals.
- adj. rare Guilty; criminal.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. injurious to physical or mental health
Etymologies
- From noxius ("hurtful, injurious"), from noxa ("hurt, injury"), for *nocsa, from nocere ("to hurt, injure"); see nocent. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English noxius, from Latin, from noxa, damage; see nek-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The good news, indeed, coming from this location, about 30 miles northwest of the previous Long Beach location here in the city of Los Angeles, L.A. firefighters, including our hazardous materials experts, have gone into a three-story AT&T telephone company switching office where they discovered approximately 10 persons who had become ill after being exposed to what they described as noxious fumes.”
“The only thing that makes me noxious is that this beautiful situation is so surreal we can only imagine it in an advert.”
Global Voices in English » Israel: Cellular firm ad stirs occupation debate
“I was sunk in noxious geekery with the switch to Shaw and GoDaddy, but I have not forgotten you.”
“Still more noxious is the writer Eduard Limonov, who heads the National Bolshevik Party and holds up Slobodan Milosevic as a model leader.”
“WEDEMAN: Cocktail No. 4 is what the detainees themselves call a noxious mix of sperm, spit, fecal matter and urine.”
“Kind of like bugs that come in noxious colors to avoid being eaten, you would need those bright colors to turn the head of that Escalade driver you’d be battling.”
“They are classified as a noxious pest in Australia.”
“Sometimes it is a sharp revelation of something ugly and perverse in my own nature ” I don't dwell long on that, but I see in imagination how it is likely to trouble me, and I hope that it will not delude me again; because these evil things delude one, they call noxious tricks by fine names.”
“From this Colony it is said to have been taken in the 16th or 17th century into the south of China, where its use was so much abused that the sale of this so-called noxious article was, for a long time, prohibited under penalty of death.”
“A medicine -- that is, a noxious agent, like a blister, a seton, an emetic, or a cathartic”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘noxious’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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501
Classic
mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly and 401 more...
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501
Classic
abhor, mirth, obtuse, iota, vex, irk, teem, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane and 401 more...
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501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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AGRI - sustainable agriculture
abiota, aborigines, absorptive capacity, acceptable daily ..., acclimation, acid precipitation, acquired by weeds..., active solar heating, acute, adaptation, additives, aerosol and 447 more...
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Steampunk
Words used quite often in steampunk
ansible, airship, chymical, valve, clockwork, dirigible, thaumaturgy, copper, bronze, difference engine, gear, rivets and 516 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Harmful
quick, hurtful, ruinous, noxious, destructive, deadly, mischievous, deleterious, baneful, injurious, baleful, malicious and 24 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1901 more...
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Hit Parade GRE
Princeton Review words
abscond, aberrant, alacrity, anomaly, approbation, arduous, assuage, audacious, austere, axiomatic, canonical, capricious and 287 more...
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words unknown
repeat!!!
laissez faire, propensity, punitive, explicit, whim, extenuating, distort, gross, grossly, hearsay, dispel, apprehensive and 113 more...
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Faves
nepenthe, cupidity, anodyne, obdurate, doleful, obsolescent, quale, piquant, velleity, inchoate, disport, facile and 366 more...
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wickedwitch's list
lll
alit, plinth, eclat, diaphanous, portico, nival, daedal, apse, fossa, pellet, avail, midge and 143 more...
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newGRE
mostly from magoosh
imbue, verge on, nonchalant, deliberate, timorous, futile, provisional, dissect, checked, tinged, alluring, visionary and 1046 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for noxious.
reesetee Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, I suppose it could be. But I've only heard obnoxious used to describe people and/or their traits and habits, whereas I've only heard "noxious" used to describe non-human things--like chemicals, weeds, pests, and so on--that may be harmful to the well-being (physical or otherwise) of living things.
Oh, one odd little tidbit: Just learned about an archaic meaning for obnoxious: "exposed or liable to harm, evil, or anything objectionable." Interesting.
Anyone else? :-) Sep 29, 2007
uselessness Technically, sure. But isn't that redundant? And, er... repetitive? Sep 28, 2007
reesetee "Toward" noxious, I guess? Sep 28, 2007
uselessness I wonder how this word is related to obnoxious? Sep 28, 2007