Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Tending to cause death or serious injury; deadly: a pernicious virus.
- adj. Causing great harm; destructive: pernicious rumors.
- adj. Archaic Evil; wicked.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Having the property of destroying or being injurious; hurtful; destructive.
- Wicked; malicious; evil-hearted.
- Quick.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. rare Quick; swift (to burn).
- adj. Having the quality of injuring or killing; destructive; very mischievous; baleful; malicious; wicked.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. exceedingly harmful
- adj. working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way
Etymologies
- From Middle English, from Old French pernicios, from Latin perniciosus ("destructive"), from pernicies ("destruction"), from per ("through") + nex ("slaughter, death") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French pernicios, from Latin perniciōsus, from perniciēs, destruction : per-, per- + nex, nec-, violent death; see nek-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It is time to undertake the reform of what I call a pernicious prejudice.”
“My eyes overflow, my dear Pauline; and Maitland will chide me for indulging what he calls a pernicious sensibility.”
“It skews consumption and investment in pernicious ways.”
Matthew Yglesias » The High Cost of Subsidized Homeownership
“Progressives are too eager to believe that national health care will make it possible to expand coverage while reducing costs — reducing deficits, even! — apparently because all those costs are in pernicious “overhead,” which seems to be joining that political holy trinity “waste, fraud, and abuse.””
“Presumably, what makes political networks so pernicious is not their personal sex life, but the very real damage they do to their states in the form of myopic and self-aggrandizing lawmaking, incompetent appointees, and a perversion of our democratic institutions.”
“The most pernicious is Proposition 25, which is being sold as a good government measure to end the state's annual fiscal follies and pass a budget on time.”
“Lane suggests that idea of dramatizing this tale — “a low-grade musing on atrocity, garnished with erotic titillation” — was “pernicious from the start.””
“Yet more pernicious is the result when that worldview is encoded, unquestioned, systemic.”
“The ingroup-outgroup distinction has the power to distort and bias our attitudes towards outgroup members in pernicious ways.”
“A reticulocyte response does not necessarily mean that specific material which the body lacks has been supplied, for there are other substances and conditions that cause reticulocytosis in pernicious anemia, which do not regularly promote normal blood formation.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pernicious’.
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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sdamle1
echt
echt, apocalypse, resurgence, forthright, logorrhea, mercurial, torrid, exorcise, obscure, intrusive, morose, vindictive and 94 more...
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allover
reintegrate, spight, surveillant, harmonize, Colophon, workplace, bigoted, unsighted, bridgework, salutation, voltmeter, octane and 159 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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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pabouche, pabulous, pabulum, pacable, pace, pachydermia, pachyglossal, pachymeter, pachynsis, paciferous, pacificate, pactolian and 1766 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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2nd part
prelude, ample, escalate, prototype, accession, acquisition, archives, zealot, indict, verdict, intimidating, timid and 454 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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(1st_wk_150)-Dec_5_2012
voracious, indiscriminate, eminent, steeped, replete, abound, technology, prognosticate, automaton, matron, paradox, realm and 297 more...
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501
Classic
bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august and 401 more...
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utopia
Words used in the book utopia by sir thomas more
credence, proverb, provost, dissimulation, espy, neologism, vouchsafe, liberality, weal, inquisitive, assentation, verily and 21 more...
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Shakespeare.04
indissoluble, braggart, abjure, hoodwink, exasperate, flourish, assay, trammel, farrow, epicure, requite, flee and 3 more...
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 481 more...
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GRE 1100
drudgery, implore, hapless, nuance, wrest, incipient, inadvertent, tremulous, bristle, euphemism, disdain, pugnacious and 346 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pernicious.
mollusque I thought Knids were vermicious. Oct 5, 2009
meeralee Then perhaps I should remove it. :-) Thanks, slumry! Jul 23, 2007
slumry "working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way" In this sense, I think it does have the connotation of insidiousness. Jul 10, 2007
seanahan Used to describe Knids. Feb 28, 2007
meeralee On this list because I always think it has the connotation of insidiousness, which it doesn't really. Feb 28, 2007