Someone stood up and asked the professor an apparently innocuous question about his laboratory work.
The interviewer only asked boring, innocuous questions.
The murder suspect was an innocuous-looking man with wire-framed glasses.
The producer dismissed the comment as quite innocuous.
Thesaurus
Longman Language Activatornot harming anything or anyone►harmless
· I don't know why you're so upset -- it was only a harmless bit of fun.· Radioactive waste needs to be stored for 25,000 years before it is harmless.harmless enough (=used to say that someone or something that may seem harmful, is in fact not harmful)· He's a little crazy, I know, but he's harmless enough.
►innocuous
not harmful - use this especially when people have said or believe that something or someone is harmful: · The producer dismissed the comment as quite innocuous.· The murder suspect was an innocuous-looking man with wire-framed glasses.seemingly/apparently innocuous (=seeming harmless, but actually intended to be harmful): · Someone stood up and asked the professor an apparently innocuous question about his laboratory work.
►do no harm/not do any harm
if an action, activity, experience etc does no harm , it does not harm someone or something and may even help: · Learning how to live on your own for a while will do you no harm at all.it would do no harm to do something: · I expect they've sold all the tickets, but it won't do any harm to ask.
►friendly
: environment-friendly/ozone-friendly etc used especially about products in shops, meaning that they do not harm the environment etc: · Look for aerosols which say 'ozone-friendly' on the can.· Tighter laws are needed to prevent manufacturers from falsely claiming their products are environment friendly.
Collocations
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES►seemingly innocuous/innocent
(=seeming unlikely to cause any problems)· Even seemingly innocuous questions can get an employer into trouble.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADVERB►seemingly
· Whatever censorship takes place in libraries, even of seemingly innocuous indecent material, can reverberate elsewhere.· Even seemingly innocuous turnstile-exits with interlocking horizontal bars give my sister pause, however.· Some were communiqu s from extremist groups overseas; others were seemingly innocuous.· It behooves companies to tread carefully in this area because even seemingly innocuous questions can get them into trouble.
not offensive, dangerous, or harmfulSYN harmless: an innocuous remark He’s a perfectly innocuous young man.—innocuously adverb