Innocuous vs Commonplace - What's the difference?
innocuous | commonplace | Synonyms |
Harmless; producing no ill effect.
* 1892 , , A Footnote to History , ch. 9:
* 1910 , , The Lair of the White Worm , ch. 11:
* {{quote-news
, year=2011
, date=September 2
, author=
, title=Wales 2-1 Montenegro
, work=BBC
Inoffensive; unprovocative; not exceptional.
* 1893 , , Mrs. Falchion , ch. 12:
* 1910 , , The Intrusion of Jimmy , ch. 28:
Ordinary; having no remarkable characteristics.
* 1824 , Sir (Walter Scott), , ch. 7:
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1
, passage=In the old days, to my commonplace and unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never read me any of his manuscripts, […], and therefore my lack of detection of his promise may in some degree be pardoned.}}
* 1911 , (w), (Under Western Eyes) , ch. 1:
A platitude or .
* 1899 , , Active Service , ch. 17:
* 1910 , , His Hour , ch. 4:
Something that is ordinary.
* 1891 , , "A Case of Identity" in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes :
A memorandum; something to be frequently consulted or referred to.
* Jonathan Swift
A commonplace book.
To make a commonplace book.
To enter in a commonplace book, or to reduce to general heads.
* Felton
(obsolete) To utter commonplaces; to indulge in platitudes.
* 1910 , , His Hour , ch. 4:
Innocuous is a synonym of commonplace.
As adjectives the difference between innocuous and commonplace
is that innocuous is harmless; producing no ill effect while commonplace is ordinary; having no remarkable characteristics.As a noun commonplace is
a platitude or.As a verb commonplace is
to make a commonplace book.innocuous
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- The shells fell for the most part innocuous ; an eyewitness saw children at play beside the flaming houses; not a soul was injured.
- Other things, too, there were, not less deadly though seemingly innocuous —dried fungi, traps intended for birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, and insects.
citation, page= , passage=As the half closed Bale and Ledley both went close with good efforts, but Bellamy picked up a yellow card for an innocuous challenge that also rules the new Liverpool man out of the trip to Wembley.}}
- Ruth Devlin announced that the song must wait, though it appeared to be innocuous and child-like in its sentiments.
- He sat down, and lighted a cigarette, casting about the while for an innocuous topic of conversation.
Synonyms
* innoxious, nonpoisonous, nontoxic * (inoffensive) uncontroversialAntonyms
* nocuous * noxious * harmful * poisonous * toxicDerived terms
* innocuity * innocuously * innocuousnesscommonplace
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- "This Mr. Tyrrel," she said, in a tone of authoritative decision, "seems after all a very ordinary sort of person, quite a commonplace man."
- I could get hold of nothing but of some commonplace phrases, those futile phrases that give the measure of our impotence before each other's trials.
Synonyms
* routine * undistinguished * unexceptional * See alsoAntonyms
* distinguished * inimitable * uniqueNoun
(en noun)- Finally he began to mutter some commonplaces which meant nothing particularly.
- And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.
- "My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence."
- Whatever, in my reading, occurs concerning this our fellow creature, I do never fail to set it down by way of commonplace .
Verb
(commonplac)- I do not apprehend any difficulty in collecting and commonplacing an universal history from the historians.
- And something angered Tamara in the way the Prince assisted in all this, out-commonplacing her friend in commonplaces with the suavest politeness.
- (Francis Bacon)