as in benign
not causing or being capable of causing injury or hurt
a perfectly harmless little spider
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of harmless
In the past few decades, as wildfires have become larger, faster, and more severe because of climate change, the focus has been on the considerable damage caused by the flames themselves; the smoke has been thought to be relatively harmless.
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Nicola Twilley, New Yorker, 5 Jan. 2026
About 1,700 of those injuries required emergency medical treatment, including many caused by sparklers—often mistakenly considered harmless.
—Miami Herald Staff, Miami Herald, 30 Dec. 2025
Social media is one of the key drivers and reinforcers of anti-Semitic extremism; tweets like Abd el-Fattah’s are not just harmless letting-off of steam.
—Helen Lewis, The Atlantic, 30 Dec. 2025
There remains a rotation underway – financials over tech , value over growth , defensives over high-beta stocks – simply not enough to hold the indexes harmless.
—Michael Santoli, CNBC, 17 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for harmless
Recent Examples of Synonyms for harmless
Adjective
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Nestled in the tiny eastern Connecticut town, the century-old building that once housed Burdick’s General Store appears to be an ordinary, benign example of historic New England architecture.—
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While largely benign, motion sickness can be highly unpleasant — often causing nausea, vomiting, and dizziness, as well as sweating, headache, and irritability in some cases.—
Adjective
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Having no cool aunt of my own and no elder sisters, just teenage babysitters and camp counselors (each with their own unique but tenuous grasp on anatomy and reproductive science), the book felt warm, inviting, and—perhaps most important to my terrified, bleeding, self—safe.—
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The two men exchange grateful texts later that evening, home safe and stumped about where to go next.—
Adjective
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Demonstrators argued that taxpayer money should not be used to harm or kill innocent people and rejected claims that the killing of Good was an act of self-defense.—
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Multiple innocent lives lost due to violence.—
Adjective
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The calls were fairly innocuous and typically would not raise eyebrows.—
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With a full roster in hand, the group will call employees directly, pretending to be a new hire with innocuous-seeming questions about platforms, cloud access, and other tech infrastructure.—
Adjective
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Probably This made very nice videos, constitutionally inoffensive, pleasant, maybe because those are qualities with mass appeal and endorsement potential.—
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The problem is that to be so universally inoffensive, an affiliative joke usually ends up being overworn and anodyne.—
Adjective
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The Panthers are pretty darn healthy this time of year compared to many teams, and that has undoubtedly helped.—
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We’re trapped by recent history — the prior year’s numbers for healthy players are the top factor in every projection.—
Cite this Entry
“Harmless.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/harmless. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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