Insidious vs Sinister - What's the difference?
insidious | sinister |
Producing harm in a stealthy, often gradual, manner.
* 1847 , George Lippard, The Quaker City: or, The monks of Monk-Hall
* 1997 , Matthew Wood, The book of herbal wisdom: using plants as medicine
* 2007 , Sharon Weinstein, Ada Lawrence Plumer, Principles and practice of intravenous therapy
Intending to entrap; alluring but harmful.
* Nathaniel Hawthorne
* 1948 , D.V. Chitaley (editor or publisher), All India Reporter , volume 3, page 341:
* 1969 , Dorothy Brewster, John Angus Burrell, Dead reckonings in fiction
* 2005 , Anita Desai, Voices in the City , page 189:
* 2007 , Joseph Epstein, Narcissus Leaves the Pool , page 171:
(nonstandard) Treacherous.
* 1858 , Phineas Camp Headley, The life of the Empress Josephine: first wife of Napoleon
* 1912 , Ralph Straus, The prison without a wall
Inauspicious]], ominous, unlucky, illegitimate (as in [[w:bar sinister, bar sinister ).
* Ben Jonson
*'>citation
Evil or seemingly evil; indicating lurking danger or harm.
Of the left side.
* Shakespeare
* Shakespeare
* 1911 , (Saki), ‘The Unrest-Cure’, The Chronicles of Clovis :
(heraldry) On the left side of a shield from the wearer's standpoint, and the right side to the viewer.
(obsolete) Wrong, as springing from indirection or obliquity; perverse; dishonest.
* Francis Bacon
* South
* Sir Walter Scott
As adjectives the difference between insidious and sinister
is that insidious is producing harm in a stealthy, often gradual, manner while sinister is inauspicious, ominous, unlucky, illegitimate (as in bar sinister).insidious
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- Strong and vigorous man as he looks, Livingstone has been for years the victim of a secret and insidious disease.
- At some point in time they may become the source of an insidious cancer.
- The nurse always must be alert to signs of slow leak or insidious infiltration.
- The insidious whisper of the bad angel.
- All these facts clearly appear to me now to establish that the sanctioned scheme was a part of a bigger and […] more insidious scheme which was to hoodwink the creditors and to firmly establish and consolidate the position […]
- The atmosphere of this insidious city comes out to meet him the moment he touches the European shore; for in London he meets Maria Gostrey just over from France.
- This seemed to her the worst defilement into which this insidious city had cheated her and in her agitation, she nearly ran into the latrine, […]
- This is the insidious way sports entrap you: you follow a player, which commits you to his team. You begin to acquire scraps of utterly useless information about teammates, managers, owners, trainers, agents, lawyers.
- Hansel and Gretel were lured by the witch’s insidious gingerbread house.
- But with whom do you contract that alliance? With the natural enemy of France — that insidious house of Austria — which detests our country from feeling, system, and necessity.
- ‘Believe me,’ he shouted, ‘these insidious folk talk dangerous nonsense. I hear they are spouting out their ridiculous platitudes not five miles from this park in which we are standing…’
- The battle was lost due to the actions of insidious defectors.
Derived terms
* insidiously * insidiousnessReferences
* * *sinister
English
Alternative forms
* sinistre (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- All the several ills that visit earth, / Brought forth by night, with a sinister birth.
- sinister influences
- the sinister atmosphere of the crypt
- Here on his sinister cheek.
- My mother's blood / Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister / Bounds in my father's.
- Before the train had stopped he had decorated his sinister shirt-cuff with the inscription, ‘J. P. Huddle, The Warren, Tilfield, near Slowborough.’
- Nimble and sinister tricks and shifts.
- He scorns to undermine another's interest by any sinister or inferior arts.
- He read in their looks sinister intentions directed particularly toward himself.